FOR THE LOVE OF CHOCOLATE Once again, Bay Area artisans are at the forefront of a confectionary renaissance Laura Compton, Chronicle Staff Writer

September 6, 2006

It doesn't feature a crazed assembly line, or vats of chocolate, but make no mistake: The Charles Chocolates facility in Emeryville is a chocolate factory. Trays of gorgeous chocolates entice from a worktable -- round lavender honey and Earl Grey truffles; rounded passion fruit and mojito hearts; orange twig truffles dusted with confectioners' sugar; and the piece de resistance, a dark chocolate box with a floral-printed white chocolate lid, filled with two kinds of caramels. These decadent confections, from chocolatier Chuck Siegel, are typical of the offerings from the new wave of Bay Area artisan chocolatiers, who are making sophisticated products paired with eye-catching packaging. "We're very blessed here in the Bay Area," says Adam Smith of Fog City News, a San Francisco magazine shop that's also known for its selection of 200-plus premium chocolate items. "In my mind, really it's sort of ground zero for the chocolate movement in this country. So many exciting things are going on now with so many chocolatiers cropping up, and they're being so experimental, trying all these new ingredients and combinations." A century after E. Guittard and Ghirardelli pioneered quality chocolate-making in San Francisco, with gold miners as their best customers, and a generation after Alice Medrich opened her Cocolat stores, and John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg started premium Scharffen Berger, these new chocolatiers are tapping into the region's passion for local, artisan products. Like Michael Recchiuti, who introduced extravagantly flavored artisan truffles in 1996, they make their gourmet chocolates by hand, using natural or organic ingredients and premium chocolate. Yet, the resulting confections are all different from one another in ways that reflect the personalities and backgrounds of their creators. "Certainly the Bay Area is very visionary when it comes to artisan chocolate," says Joan Steuer, who consults for big and small chocolate companies. "It paves the way for what's to come." "The sky's the limit,'' says Smith. "Whoever would have thought about putting dragon fruit into a chocolate bar?" Oakland chocolatier Michael Mischer has. His line of 20 oversize criollo chocolate bars

are studded with caramelized nibs,

Montmorency cherries, roasted nuts and spicy mango. Mischer also fashions rich Belgian-style shell-molded truffles, which he sells at his stylish Grand Avenue store. In Sausalito, Stephanie Marcon makes enrobed ganaches that taste like banana splits, gingerbread and malted milk and other nostalgic flavors for her Coco-luxe line. San Franciscan Ariella Toeman's Cocoa Nuts marry her classic French training with her fondness for nuts in the form of dragees -- nuts roasted and caramelized, then dipped and coated in dark or milk chocolate. They are by no means the only artisan chocolatiers around -- from Woodhouse Chocolates in St. Helena to Richard Donnelly in Santa Cruz, others are also making exquisite confections -- but their products are among the most visible. Grocers such as Whole Foods, Andronico's and Draeger's carry most of the lines, as do smaller specialty stores such as Bi-Rite Market and Gump's in San Francisco.

Changing tastes Americans spent $15.8 billion on chocolate confections last year, according to the Department of Commerce, up 3 percent from the year before. But tastes have deepened. Dark chocolate sales have increased by at least 15 percent over the past three years, says Lynn Bragg, president of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, a trade association whose members account for 90 percent of U.S. cocoa production. Seduced by antioxidant claims and the explosion in offerings, more and more people are discovering premium chocolate, preferably with a high cacao percentage (see "The dark chocolate obsession," this page), and exploring its characteristics as they would a fine wine. Within the dark chocolate category, trends such as sweet-salty and hot-spicy flavors and "single origin" cacao sources have taken hold, converting more connoisseurs every day. The mass-market companies have taken notice: In the past six months, Dove, See's and Ghirardelli have all

rolled out dark chocolate offerings, including Mars Inc., which is reintroducing its limited-edition dark M&Ms. Hershey Co. thought tastes were changing enough to buy both truffle maker Joseph Schmidt and Scharffen Berger a year ago and start a new subsidiary, Artisan Confections Co. Hershey also has a new premium line called Cacao Reserve, and a single-origin line planned for December. Everyday indulgence "People are using chocolate in a different way. The price is less of a variable, and the quality is more important," Steuer says. She credits Starbucks with helping shift the perception of chocolate as a special occasion treat to an "experiential indulgence" of buying several truffles in the afternoon. "We're spending $5 for coffee, and $5 for chocolate," she says. It seems consumers will pay for quality. That's what premium chocolate offers, from the couverture, a French term that refers to chocolate that is at least 32 percent cocoa butter, to natural ingredients, and no shelf life-extending additives. "We order one week, they make it that week, we get the delivery within 3 to 4 days -- people realize it's the freshest it can be," says Ron De Leon, head buyer at Bi-Rite, which stocks a wide range of items from small chocolate companies. "The greatest thing about artisan products is the story behind them," he continues. The chocolatiers "are so passionate about what they do. Everything they say, they make you want to eat every one of their chocolates." With nine candymakers on staff and part-time help as needed, Siegel has the largest operation of the emerging chocolatiers. He just lured his friend Glen Ishikata from Scharffen Berger to be Charles Chocolates' vice president of operations, managing production and distribution. Charles Chocolates is Siegel's second candy company. In 1987, the self-taught chocolatier, then 25, founded Attivo

Confections, which sold s'mores kits,

among other things. He learned by "trial and error," he says. "Back then there weren't the educational opportunities that exist today." He sold Attivo in 1995, and worked at San Francisco financial services and technology companies but "always had my foot in the chocolate," he says, consulting formally and informally, and making chocolates for parties and events. His chocolate tempering machine lived in his kitchen until he started Charles Chocolates. Back to the sweet life Eventually, he realized that "as much fun as I had helping other people, I really missed making candy." He spent a few months developing a varied line of handmade artisanal products, got wife Shabana's seal of approval, and was up and running by Oct. 1, 2004. Charles Chocolate's distinctive packaging juxtaposes a loopy cursive logo and lines against primary colors and a brown background. Marcon, too, spent time in business world before going back to her pre-MBA idea of attending the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena. The timing for the pastry chef program worked out so well that "I really think it was fate," she says. "When I got out of culinary school, my favorite thing was chocolate. I like the way you have to work with it -- the scientific principles and temperature control." She spent six months working for Michael Recchiuti, then launched Coco-luxe in February, a year after leaving CIA. Marcon started experimenting with her favorite flavor, gingerbread. After looking at all kinds of recipes and playing around with percentages of cream and spices, she came up with a combination that tasted like spice cake: white chocolate ganache infused with spices and blended with molasses. The crowning touch is an illustration of a gingerbread man made with custom colored cocoa-butter transfer sheets. She uses El Rey's Venezuelan white chocolate, which blends cocoa butter with real vanilla and milk solids.

Her nine-piece box of dessert

chocolates are square ganaches with colorful graphics that clue you in to what's inside -- banana split, devil's food and double cherry -- "the flavors that you remember as a kid, but more refined." Her afternoon chocolates are green tea, mocha and chai-flavored. In each case, "I wanted good-quality chocolate that you want to eat every day." The square, striped boxes, labeled, "Nine chocolates to share -- or not," retail for around $18. She produces about 600 boxes a month; that number is rising as the chocolates are distributed to more Whole Foods stores. French influence Toeman also trained as a pastry chef, at Paris' famed Le Cordon Bleu, then interned and worked at the pastry shop Fauchon. She was a pastry cook at Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Daniel Boulud's New York restaurants and had a wedding cake business in her hometown of Montreal before moving to San Francisco in 2003. "My background is Middle Eastern, and I like a lot of nuts, so I like the concept of the French praline almonds. Cocoa Nuts are a combination of my love of chocolate and love of nuts." The confection is based on her grandmother's recipe. Toeman candies and roasts the almond until the outside shell caramelizes, then dips it in El Rey's Venezuelan chocolate. A dusting of cocoa powder and roasted, ground spices or espresso powder finishes it. The French names reflect her classic training; the first three were Noir, Lait and Epices -- dark chocolate, milk chocolate and a spice blend. She has since added others such as Aztec (featuring Hatch chile powder from New Mexico and cinnamon) and Framboise, a haunting raspberry flavor. Toeman also produces six bars with these same flavors, and is introducing a new line of choclate bark called Cocoa Loco this fall. She designed the original packaging herself at Kinko's, though she has since had a professional designer revamp it. The clothing boutique Girlfriends on Union Street, Say Cheese and PlumpJack were among her first retail accounts. She's gone from a dozen stores her first year to almost 60 now, including Northern California's 25 Whole Foods stores. Playing with flavors Michael Mischer, also a trained pastry chef, ran a pastry shop called Die Konditorei in Alameda during the '90s. He opened his

store in 2004 on Oakland's Grand

Avenue corridor. He puts in a 12-hour day, making chocolates in the back, then coming out to sell them from 5 to 10 p.m. "Some people come in every day and buy one piece -- that's their fix," he says. "A lot of people obviously buy it for gifts, or before a party." Still others buy chocolates to smuggle into the nearby Grand Lake Theatre. The evocatively shaped truffles, and bagged gift items, such as chocolate-covered potato chips, are displayed on marble counters. Although these sumptuous truffles, marzipan potatoes and almond clusters are traditional, he likes to experiment with flavors, having created infusions with Calvados, the apple-flavored spirit, as well as tequila, in addition to more traditional fruit essences. Mischer used to make a pistachio truffle, but no one ever bought it. A jalapeno truffle "didn't work out," he says, but "chipotle works well," he says. "It has a smoky quality." He started making bars last fall, at the request of his wife, Audrey. "I'm having fun with the bars," he says. "Right now I'm experimenting with sun-dried tomatoes and almonds on 65 percent bittersweet chocolate." The 20 bars line a dark-wood shelf offset by burnt orange walls; Mischer designed the clear plastic packaging himself to show the bar's contents, which are sprinkled on the underside. Milk chocolate with toffee and spicy mango with cayenne are big sellers. The bars are also carried at Draeger's, Fog City News, Sigona's Farmers Market and a few other stores. Mischer's couverture comes from South America's noble-grade criollo beans, sometimes called "flavor beans." Criollo makes up less than 5 percent of the world's cacao supply. The rest of his ingredients are as local as possible. Although many people still think of chocolate as either milk or dark, and don't explore the other nuances. "They know when they have a good bar of chocolate," Mischer notes. Siegel believes this chocolate fever started with the availability of high-end chocolate. "I truly think one of the most influential things was Trader Joe's carrying Valrhona," he says of the French brand.

"Valrhona is arguably one of the best chocolate bars in the world, and hundreds of thousands of people have had it. Like any specialty food product, once you've had really good chocolate, you really appreciate the difference, and you don't like going back." Buying a premium chocolate bar is "not considered just an indulgence anymore, it's considered a chocolate bar choice," he says. "Right now, I think we're really at the beginning of a great chocolate renaissance in the Bay Area." Consultant Steuer agrees. "Love and obsession with chocolate is not a fad. It's a trend that's here to stay." The dark chocolate obsession No chocolatier worth his or her couverture wants to discourage customers from eating chocolate. But there is one thing that puzzles them. Why the obsession with percentages? "This 72 percent, 80 percent chocolate thing to me is such a crock," Chuck Siegel says. "Every chocolate is different, and has wildly different ratios of cocoa butter to chocolate liquor." For instance, "Our 65 percent bittersweet chocolate has more chocolate liquor than most 72 percents." Cacao is simply the amount of cacao beans and cocoa butter by weight; the remainder refers to sugar and vanilla. But hype about the antioxidant properties of dark chocolate has taken hold in the public consciousness. Inevitably, perhaps, consumers think the darker the chocolate, the healthier it must be. Chocolate consultant Joan Steuer says interest in dark chocolate may have been sparked by Starbucks and others popularizing dark-roast coffee. Since then, other flavors have become "mega and extreme, and bitterer, and stronger and spicier," she says, with dark chocolate gaining favor in the last five years. "I was never a big fan of putting a percentage on the label," says Michael Mischer, who makes and sells chocolates at his Grand Avenue store in Oakland. Yet he's also relented, labeling his bars: 38 percent (milk chocolate), 65 percent (bittersweet) and 72 percent (dark). Toeman notices the intense consumer interest in percentages at in-store demonstrations she sometimes

gives. "Seventy percent -- it's golden to them,'' she says. "For some reason, they think the higher the number, the better the chocolate." Steuer joked, "How high will it go? Ninety-nine percent?" Toeman points out, "If you wanted to make a really good cup of coffee, you don't use more espresso, you use better beans." -- Laura Compton