It's December, a month when eating copious amounts of chocolate is considered a normal holiday activity.

Whether you're buying or eating, it's time to acquaint yourself with the modern world of chocolate, especially if Pot of Gold still rings your bells.

Over the past decade, chocolate became more complicated, but also much more delicious here on the West Coast. Put another way, we're beginning to think of chocolate like we think of cheese and wine. Pot of Gold is the chocolate equivalent of Velveeta cheese.

Greg Hook, one of the early artisanal chocolatiers in Vancouver (he opened Chocolate Arts on West Fourth Avenue, in 1992), is just finishing up his annual Christmas display for his window. This year, it's a landscape of penguins which took him 12 hours to make. He'll be donating it to Children's Hospital on Christmas Eve.

"When I first opened, we'd sell 60 to 70 per cent milk chocolate over dark chocolate," he says. Now, it's reversed with the majority of customers wanting chocolates with a sophisticated bitter edge. Cocoa solids in dark chocolate are easily 70 per cent in shops like his, compared with the 55 per cent when he started. Early local chocolatiers like Purdy's and Daniel Le Chocolat Belge paved the way for him with better grade chocolate.

Purdy's, which has been around since 1907, has been noting the rapid change in consumer expectations. Purdy's mainstream chocolates have also moved towards 70-per-cent cocoa solids. "Consumer preference is for a

lot less sweet and more chocolate flavours," says Gary Mitchell, production supervisor. Consumers are also keen to learn about chocolate "origins," he says. Last year, the company started selling boxes of "origin" chocolates with single-source chocolates rather than blends. "It's a taster selection, all very unique with very unique notes and flavours, just like wine," he says. "People were asking for it. They wanted to taste the differences."

Chocolate makers talk of the origins of the cocoa beans in the same way coffee roasters and wine makers look for certain characteristics in their beans and grapes. "It's gone now to single-origin chocolates from single plantations," says Hook.

At Thomas Haas Fine Chocolates and Patisserie, in North Vancouver, Haas has already sold about 16 of his $250 "Le Chocolat Box" with 61 fresh chocolates to connoisseurs of fine chocolates. Le Chocolat Box comes in a compartmentalized imitation crocodile leather box made by the same company that makes packaging for Hermes. "Some have taken it as a hostess gift," he says of the over-the-top box of exquisite chocolates. Another hot item this year is his chocolate box of chocolates -- a dark chocolate base, with a white chocolate top, and Santa silkscreened on top. Eat the chocolates, then eat the box. Haas works with criolla cocoa bean chocolate, the most expensive, with the smallest annual harvest (six per cent of total).

"I'm usually against over-packaging but this looks like a piece of furniture," he says. Haas recently got dibs on one tonne of the only wild-harvest cocoa beans in the world from Bolivia. "There's only six tonnes a year produced," he says.

"I believe there is a lot to be said for where the beans come from, but I think the final results and quality shows in the time spent conching the chocolate and what we create with it." While some companies produce vast amounts of chocolate in short conching times (eight to 10 hours), companies like Valrhona and Felchlin (where he buys his chocolate) produce in small batches with long conching times of up to 72 hours, he says. "Customers do taste the difference."

Conching is the mixing process. "The [cocoa] paste or powder is sent through a series of rollers in the conching machine," says Hook, "and it gets a little more fluid and smooth from the heat from the friction and volatile acids disappear."

At Thomas Haas (as well as Senses in Vancouver, which sells his chocolates), you'll find the much-admired Sparkle Cookies where you immediately taste the quality of chocolate as soon as it hits the mouth and chocolate gift boxes come filled with holiday flavours such as eggnog liqueur, merlot with caramel, oak barrel-aged maple with carmel and pecan with fleur de sel.

And by the way, hot chocolate has gone far beyond Fry's cocoa. Chocolatiers sell high-quality powdered mixes or shops like Thomas Haas will serve it steaming hot, ready to drink. As well, no-sugar-added chocolates are on the rise, says Mitchell. It's not the low-carb consumers so much as the diabetics and others for whom sugar isn't an option.

The most adventurous of palates turn to DC Duby Wild Sweets of Richmond, with its unusual flavour combinations and science lab experimentation behind the artisanal creations. Their last chocolate "collection" included red pepper, raspberry and vodka emulsion; sweet pea emulsion with almond nougat; morel icewine emulsion with walnut panko toast; barbecue tomato jam and matcha lime emulsion; rhubarb stilton emulsion with port wine reduction. Their virtual boutique can be found at www.dcduby.com.

Other artisanal chocolate makers include Over The Moon Chocolates, Ganache Patisserie, Cinnamon's Chocolate (North Vancouver), Cocoa West Chocolatier (Bowen Island), Chocolatas (Abbotsford), Chocolate Tofino (Tofino), and Denman Island Chocolates (Denman Island).

mstainsby@png.canwest.com