Belgium celebrates its long-standing national tradition of exceptional chocolate in an unconventional fashion: they're putting the sweets on stamps.
The Belgian post office (Bpost) put out 538,000 stamps for circulation Monday that depict stacks of dark chocolate, rows of their famous cacao candy, and swirls of the bean itself, but the sugar doesn't stop there. The adhesive on the back is made of essence of cacao oil, and the ink on the front of the stamp is infused with the scent as well.
"It was not easy to get the scent and flavor of the dark chocolate right," a representative from the Belgian postal service told Metro. "In the end, people from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland all worked on it."
This is not the first time stamps have been scented, think scratch 'n' sniff here, but the difference, Bpost explains, is that "this time it has been combined with a flavor."
Not to mention a worldwide delicacy. Even the Metro calls their stamp move a confirmation of "the country's status as the finest chocolatiers on the continent."
What makes the famed Belgian chocolate so popular? In 1912, Jean Neuhaus created a special process involving cold shells called "couverture" -literally, coverage-for pralines: chocolates filled with cream, coffee, hazelnut, or fruit. Additionally, most other chocolatiers receive their chocolate as a solid, which then must be melted once more for use. Belgian chocolate purveyors, however, get theirs from heated trucks shortly after the chocolate has tempered. The heat retention keeps the flavor high and the aroma rich.
Belgian stamp collector Marie-Claire Verstichel told the Associated Press, the new stamps taste was lackluster but, "they smell good."
A pack of five stamps costs 6.2 euro, (around eight U.S. dollars). They have arrived just in time for Easter, when Belgian chocolate sales go through the roof.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
