Cacao butter has the amazing quality of melting at body temperature.  In chocolate, this creates that divine mouth-feel.  The killer melt-in-your-mouth sensation that brings in waves of flavor.  In practice, however, we rarely get chocolate that good because the cacao butter is often partially removed during the chocolate-making process.  Why?  Because it is worth good money to the cosmetics industry.

But then you may well ask: "What replaces that cacao butter?"  Glad you asked: yucky fats.  Cheap fats that do not have nearly the same qualities as cacao butter.  Fats that make the chocolate feel waxy in comparison, like it is coating your tongue and you need to have a drink afterward.

Artisan chocolate is different from industrial chocolate in so many ways, all along the chain, and this is but one of them.  There are legitimate reasons it costs more, too, and substituting cheap fats is a biggie.  The big chocolate makers think we won't know what's missing.  Well, we do, and we can surely taste the difference.  Come by the store for some *real* chocolate.  Some chocolate made with only real cacao butter.  Some chocolate that will melt in your mouth like no other!

I have customers come in all the time and tell me, slightly downcast, that they only like milk chocolate.  They think that for some reason this disqualifies them from being a chocolate aficionado.  Not so!  It is true that when folks learn more about chocolate they tend to start liking the darker stuff better.  But not all the time, and there is certainly some amazing chocolate out there made just for you milk chocolate fans.

I take my hard cases and sample something like the Videri Dark Milk -- or the Fruition Dark Milk Chocolate with Fleur de Sel -- and no one has ever said it was too dark.  Usually, minds are blown.  I explain that regular milk chocolate has so little real chocolate in it -- often just 11% -- that the flavor comes from crap additives and not from the real cacao.  The Videri is 50% cacao, many times the standard for milk chocolate, and yet milk chocolate lovers find it a revelation.  Not too dark, not at all bitter, and definitely one of the best uses of cacao beans ever.

In the past year I have learned a ton about the art and science of chocolate making, and the more I learn the more I am overwhelmed by the complexity.  There are whole worlds to know just about the cacao plant:  different types of trees, both hybrid and heirloom; pruning methods, soils and terroir, harvesting -- even a DNA project.  And then the beans must be properly fermented by the farmer, a process that takes days.  

Much of the world's commodity chocolate comes from an inferior bean -- that itself comes from a very productive  and cost-effective plant -- that is dried and fermented by the side of the road where gas fumes taint the chocolate.  No wonder Hershey's milk chocolate is only 10% cacao -- who would want more of that stuff!  You can buy a ton of cacao beans on the world market by just picking up the phone, but I wouldn't want to eat any of the chocolate you make from it.

So, are we up to the shipping yet?  Because, yes, the special beans used to make craft chocolate even need to be packed and shipped a certain way.  Don't get me started!