Saturday, October 31, 2009 NEW YORK: This weekend is the 12th annual chocolate show in New York -- billed as the world's largest.There are more than 800 exhibits, including a chocolate bookstore, where famous chefs are signing chocolate cookbooks. There's also a chocolate lounge, featuring chocolate flavored liqueurs, coffees and snacks and a chocolate beauty pavilion that features products based on the cocoa bean.Hakan Martensson has a chocolate carving exhibit. He says it takes anywhere from one hour to a couple of months to carve a chocolate sculpture.One unusual offering at the show is a weeklong vacation at a lodge in the Belize rain forest, where one can learn to make chocolate.The chocolate show ends on Sunday.
Sunday, February 28, 2010 HAVANA: Hundreds of wealthy merchants and cigar aficionados from all parts of the world gathered in Havana this week to bid high stakes for humidors full of premium cigars. Cuba's annual Habanos festival ended on Friday night with an auction of ornate humidors of cedar and mahogany stacked with hand-rolled stogies that raised 800,000 euros ($1.09 million dollars). Habanos S.A. executives this month said cigar sales fell 8 percent to $360 million in 2009, so they have created the Julieta, a smaller, milder version of the Romeo y Julieta cigar, aimed specifically at female smokers. Women now make up only 5 to 10 percent of customers for Habanos. But even with the creation of the Julieta, Garcia said Habanos has only modest hopes for 2010 sales, due largely to a weak economy in Spain, the biggest market for Cuban cigars. The flavor of premium tobacco relies on the soil and climate in which it is grown. The western province of Pinar Del Rio, famous fo...
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