Chocolate-of-the-Month

September 29, 2004 8:45 AM

I'd like to sign my wife up for a good chocolate-of-the-month club for her upcoming birthday. However, they are legion, and I figure most of them probably suck. Any hints/recommendations/warding spells? [Yeah, step on in for more.]

What I'm looking for, loosely:

1. Good chocolate. Duh. I just don't want her getting Hershey bars, you know?

2. Budget is up to around 200 clams, so maybe a 3-6 month subscription?

3. Plans with just plain old chocolate are preferable to things like pralines, truffles, etc., but I'm not going to take a hard line on this.

posted by Skot to shopping (14 comments total)

vosges haut chocolate's 6 moon club

extremely high quality; beautiful presentation; excellent customer service and yummy, exotic, really special taste combinations. i've had them ship things cross country for me and have had no reports of quality degradation. the club is the truffles, but they do have bars available.

(hm, now i know where i'm stopping on my lunch break, luckily, it's cool enough now for cocoa
posted by crush-onastick at 9:00 AM on September 29, 2004

mmm crush, you are a bad influence! it's probably very good that i didn't know about that place when i worked two blocks from there.

now i have to get myself down to michigan ave.
posted by sugarfish at 9:50 AM on September 29, 2004

Jacques Torres has a chocolate of the month thing too, also I believe La Maison Du Chocolat and Marie Belle have that too. I love all three, but frankly La Maison Du Chocolat is incredibly divine. Also I think Marie Belle's chocolates are actually made by Jacques.
posted by riffola at 9:59 AM on September 29, 2004

Also I'm not a big fan of Vosges, but that's just me it seems.
posted by riffola at 10:01 AM on September 29, 2004

I'll second the Jacque Torres nomination. The salted caramel flavored ones are unbelievably tasty.
posted by jonmc at 10:28 AM on September 29, 2004

Skot = my dream husband

Jacque Torres is wonderful - very high quality, and I think you can get mainly bars and squares of just chocolate, which seems to be what you're after. If I were getting chocolate, I'd feel pampered with Vosages. So decadent, indulgent, heady, and beautifully presented. When some woman said that chocolate was better than sex, this was the chocolate she was talking about.

On second thought, you might not want her to have chocolate that was better than sex, so use your best judgement ;)
posted by iconomy at 10:34 AM on September 29, 2004

Wow, that looks even better than Moonstruck.
Ten blocks each way ... hm.
posted by kenko at 10:38 AM on September 29, 2004

vosges is better than moonstruck--though not as comfortable. and no coffee. and no cookies.

you can buy vosges cocoas to make at home at field's.
posted by crush-onastick at 10:56 AM on September 29, 2004

Please look for organic/fair trade/cooperative chocolate. Shouldn't be difficult: most great chocolate isn't slave-made, 'cause slaves aren't likely to really care about what they're making.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:08 AM on September 29, 2004

i'm a big fan of vosges. but my very favorite is recchiuti. don't know if they do of-the-month programs... r. is a lucky woman.
posted by judith at 11:44 AM on September 29, 2004

Although their online presence is not so great, I grew up on Fannie May (not Fannie Farmer nor Fannie Mae) chocolates. Get a paper catalog or call and ask. Oh, and the trinidads are not to be missed.
posted by plinth at 3:15 PM on September 29, 2004

dumb, dumb, dumb - here's the link.
posted by plinth at 3:16 PM on September 29, 2004

i'm a dark chocolate lover godiva girl
sorry, haven't searched the site but they use to have a subscription thing, if not you can set up an account and just check off which one suits which month. same for neiman marcus, they had a key lime silk that killed me
(does that make me undead or reborn?)
if you know what kind she likes, you can go belgian, swiss, even english if necessary, and most places set up accounts for business gifts so you can set the schedule of automated gift giving.
posted by ethylene at 5:38 PM on September 29, 2004

this is a bit late, but a friend just came to visit and brought a box of chocolates from burdick's. i've never had chocolate like this before - apologies if it's the fashion in the states or something - but it was a selection of very small chocolates, with a huge variety of flavours. things with spices, coffee, tea, fruits, nuts, etc etc. eating them wasn't so much about chocolate, as about discovering completely new tastes. it doesn't fit in with your emphasis on bars, since they were generally truffle-like in consistency (but the flavours were nothing like the traditional chocolate truffles i've had in the uk and europe), but the web site does have a club that regularly ships chocolate. it's amazingly expensive (by my standards) and i wouldn't imagine paying for such things regularly, but to try them once was a really memorable experience.... (i guess i sound like a bad advertising writer, but i'm just amazed by how they tasted).
posted by andrew cooke at 6:01 PM on October 7, 2004