Chocolate-maker Richard Donnelly wants to change the way people eat chocolate. He’s not some diet nanny warning us that Valrhona will make our teeth fall out, turn us into diabetics or increase our girth to the point where we can no longer wedge ourselves into an airline seat. It’s not that he wants us to eat less chocolate. He wants us to eat better chocolate.
That’s because, for the most part, the mass-produced, colorfully wrapped logs of synthochoc pumped out of the mass-candy factories are to real chocolate what house plonk is to vintage Bordeaux or a Hong Kong knockoff is to a Savile Row suit. One is pedestrian, the other sublime. And while most people are happy gnawing on a Mars bar or choking down a Charleston Chew, real chocophiles like Donnelly believe that life is too short to eat cheap chocolate.
Chocopologie by Knipschildt
Cost: $2,600 per pound*
Where: Norwalk, Conn.
www.knipschildt.com

Knipschildt Chocolatier was founded in 1999 by Fritz Knipschildt, who got his culinary education as a chef in Denmark. The most-expensive chocolate he sells–a $250 dark chocolate truffle with a French black truffle inside–is available on a preorder-only basis. It’s made of 70% Valrhona cacao, which is blended into a creamy ganache with truffle oil. The truffle is then hand-rolled with a dark truffle on the inside and dusted with cocoa powder.

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