At least it is for red-cheeked children who are looking to warm up after coming in from a well-spent snow day.

And for lady folk curled up in a blanket watching The Shop Around the Corner.

But a man, he's sitting by the fire in his leather chair, drinking a properly manly drink like black coffee, or scotch, perhaps.

Such is the perception of cocoa these days. It is but a sweet confection a man might drink a few times each year, if at all.

For thousands of years, however, it was quite a different story. While we tend to think of chocolate today in its solid form, for nine-tenths of its long history, chocolate was a drink – the first true chocolate bar as we now know it was not invented until 1839.