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can you taste a difference between organic and conventional chocolate?it's amazing, just two or three years ago, it was almost impossible to get good organic beans. but the current demand is so great and larger companies like green & black have really helped educate growers and the public. the taste depends on the texture, which is dependent on the way that the bar is processed. 85% is about as high as i can go, though there is a german bar called hachez that's 88%, which is my 15 year old son's favorite bar.tell me a little about how you came to open the shop?my partners and i were all in the tech world and i went to europe frequently for work. chocolate was dealt with in a very different way there. it's an agricultural product that is similar to wine, but it's dealt with as a luxury product and sold in precious environments with hard marble, cherry and glass. so almost exactly three years ago, we decided to essentially create a wine store for chocolate so that we could reflect the deep agricultural roots and the history. we opened two stores in 2005 and are planning to open our third this summer in danville.what do you hope your customers experience when they visit the store?the goal is that each store feels like a comfortable, welcoming, unpretentious place. we have wide planked rustic floors, so it feels like you've walked into an old log cabin or are on a cocao plantation. our focus is on educating people about chocolate, and it's great because while it's not a bar, or a restaurant, it's a place where people tend to show up with friends and family.you carry about 50 different brands. how do you choose what to sell?we look at lot at the story behind the bar because it's important for us to be able to tell our customers about the people behind the bar and why we like the company. and we watch what our customers are buying—they want the higher percentages, they want fair trade and organic, and single bean origins are really important to customers. i really like when we can find companies like divine or grenada chocolate company that are making great products and doing great work at the same time. divine has a coop of 45,000 growers in ghana and they are doing a lot to educate them. that's an ideal company for us to be carrying.what's your favorite chocolate bar at the moment?honestly, once we started making our own bittersweet origin bars, i fell in love with them because they are so distinct. seneca, one of my partners, creates a different bar each month using beans from a specific plantation. he travels through south america and hawaii to find sources and develop relationships with the growers. we do have a 90% bar called the plantations bar from a rainforest cooperative in ecuador. it's our #1 selling bar. it's got a very strong flavor but it's not too bitter. the san francisco audience really seems to like that it's organic, it has very little sugar and is really high in antioxidants. the other is the grenada from a coop there that's not only organic, but all of the energy used to make the bars on the plantation is solar. there are a lot of people doing interesting things where you might not expect it.why are there so few fair trade-certified chocolate bars being made in the us?right now, as far as fair trade is concerned, there is a very limited amount of beans available. the plantations are tiny and by themselves, they often can't afford the label because it's too expensive. this goes for organic as well. thankfully, coops are starting to move in and help them do it in an affordable way. but there are many high-end producers like scharffen berger and michel cluizel who are working exclusively with specific plantations and are paying a very high price for quality beans. but it's not labeled fair trade because it's not certified. cocoa, almost by definition, has to be grown organically because the organisms that fertilize the trees are killed by the sprays. so just because a bar doesn't have a label doesn't mean it's not worth supporting.if a bar doesn't carry a fair trade or organic label, how can you know it's been responsibly produced?if you look at a label that states the plantation it's coming from, like those two brands do, you know that that chocolate maker has a vested interest in ensuring that that plantation continues to do well. and that means they are often paying more than fair trade does. this is especially true with the single-origin chocolate makers because their first concern is the quality of the beans. they will pay top dollar to secure their limited sources. where chocolate has a problem is in the mass market, which is where most of the ivory coast chocolate goes. even with mass-market organic bars, which have slightly better quality than conventional, they are still buying at a lower quality since they have to buy so much and there is such a limited amount of high-quality beans available. but the demand is requiring places like venezuela and indonesia to maintain their rainforests because they can't grow cocao otherwise. brazil used to be one of the top cocoa-growing countries, but their rainforest has been totally decimated and the beans can't be grown there anymore. so even a big company like hershey's that's making organic products is helping to preserve the environment.what's the most inventive chocolate bar that you've seen lately?the vosges mo' bacon bar. it's awesome. it has applewood smoked bacon and people really love it. bacon is sort of a trendy ingredient right now. the other innovative thing that's starting to happen is a brand new trend toward making the bars on the plantations where the beans are grown. it used to be that the many of the people who grew the beans had never even tasted chocolate before, but now, the chocolate maker can turn to the grower and they can taste bars and look at the beans that went into each specific one. the grower will be able to have a better understanding of how their growing practices, like mulching the trees and picking pods at specific rimes, can really influence the flavor of the beans. this happens with wine, but it's never happened with chocolate before and it's going to make a huge difference in the approach. it will only happen in a few places because of the logistical challenges, but we're trying to carry the bars that are made this way.what do you crave when you're not eating chocolate?because of being around sweet things all day, i definitely crave protein. my diet pretty much consists of chocolate and protein. though actually, i've started thinking about the 100% bars that we have as cheese, rather than a sweet. if the texture is really good, like an italian bar called domori that has an incredible mouth feel, it can be almost savory since there's no sugar. l used to think i couldn't live without snickers, but when i taste one now, i'm just not interested. my three kids have gotten to be that way too, which can be a bit of a problem.can you suggest two chocolate and wine pairings for a quick valentine's day dessert?seneca, who does our tastings, always says that his favorite pairing is scotch and a 65% or 70% dark chocolate. most people want to pair chocolate with red wine, but they are so similar that they compete for the same taste buds. port can be good because the tannins aren't quite as strong as they are in wine. and champagne is absolutely fantastic with dark chocolate.is there a chocolate product that you have to eat every single day?our pecan chocolate chip cookies are incredible. and we have a fleur de sel caramel cookie that's a sandwich like an oreo that i love. but we open at 9 or 10 in the morning and a lot of people come in for the hot chocolate. this month, we have a special one called temporado that's based on a mayan recipe. it has cornmeal in it, so it's almost like a chocolate cereal. it's a great way to start the day.