Buying chocolate for someone who knows chocolate

For an enthusiast the packaging is largely waste and the money is better in the chocolate. A large ribboned assortment reads as generic; three unusual bars in paper read as considered.

The useful axis is unfamiliarity rather than expense. Someone who has worked through the well-known makers will be more interested in a bar from an origin or a producer they have not tried than in a more expensive version of something they have.

Specific, checkable claims: a named farm or cooperative, a harvest year, a stated fermentation protocol, a single lot. These are the things a maker doing unusual work will print, because it is expensive and it is the point.

Origins that are under-represented are a good bet — the Pacific, the Caribbean islands, and the smaller Latin American producers all make bars that a well-read enthusiast may not have met. So are unusual processes: a long-conched bar next to a short-conched one from the same maker and the same beans is a genuinely interesting gift.

Ask, or look at what they have. Enthusiasts generally keep a box, and the makers in it tell you what to avoid rather than what to buy.

If you cannot ask, buy narrow and recent: a single maker's current harvest lots, or a comparison set built around one variable. Both are hard to already own, and both are more interesting than a broad selection of well-known bars.