Chocolate and coffee.

It is no secret that coffee and chocolate have a reputation for being, well, habit-forming. I'd rather leave the medical and scientific discussion to those more representative of the current state of research, like the Weekly World News and People magazine. But, it is important to realize that both coffee and chocolate have legions of fans. The idea of forming clubs around products featuring both is inspired and natural.

I haven't personally touched chocolate since 1985. I decided to give it up after a friend and therapist told me I was too hyper and should avoid chocolate. For some reason he didn't mention coffee - I think it was because I made coffee whenever he came by and he didn't want to "dry up the well" of great coffee.

Science, Psuedo-Science and History. (The three words that say, "skip this section") The rampage against both coffee and chocolate is best documented in Dr. Andrew Weil's (co-authored by Winifred Rosen) classic treatise against both, From Chocolate to Morphine, published by Houghton Mifflin. The title says it all. Weil, a Harvard medical doctor who "got religion" about holistic medicine has the gall to bash coffee in seemingly every page, claiming that literally millions are secretly addicted to coffee. Curiously, he takes a more forgiving attitude with chocolate, possibly due to his observation that most chocoholics are women. He goes on to say that, "in moderation, chocolate is a pleasant and interesting addition to the diet." Thank you, doctor.

Dr. Weil also gives chocolate the ultimate New Age nod, but referring to its use in ancient religious ceremonies by those fun-loving Aztecs. He fails to mention the many church bake sales that also feature copious amounts of chocolaty products.

Both coffee and chocolate are placed under the stimulants category. Caffeine is credited with coffee's stimulating effects, although Dr. Weil seems to believe the coffee has almost magical qualities that push its window beyond the value of caffeine alone. Chocolate has theobromine as its stimulating ingredient. Regardless of both appearing in a drug book, if you are trying to experience the classic drug lifestyle and wish to hallucinate, or want to become a loser in society, there are far more effective choices than either chocolate or coffee. Within its limited role, however, suffice it to say that there appears to be a synergy of the two products combined.

Well, like your mother in Florida, I just want you to know how much I've suffered for you. I had to write this article without ever tasting the many chocolate samples that came my way via research, instead sending them on to Tea and Coffee's New York office. They must've had some party.

Drinking Chocolate - According to Ian Bersten, friend and coffee historian, the background of drinking chocolate began almost the moment it arrived in Spain from Mexico via Hernando Cortex in the early 16th century. Soon shopping malls throughout Europe were serving it, although sugar wasn't added until nearly a hundred years later.

Chocolate has a lot in common with coffee. Like coffee, chocolate starts in beans grown on trees. The tree is called cacao (pronounced cah-cow). Like coffee, we are interested mostly in the seeds, called cocoa beans. Here the coffee and cocoa part company because the cocoa beans has two products, not just one and here is where a lot of confusion exists. There is cocoa butter, which, mixed with sugar, becomes white chocolate. There is then the cocoa bean, which is roasted and, with most of the fat removed, becomes cocoa. Cocoa can be ground to a powder and used straight, or become either milk chocolate by adding milk and sugar, or dark chocolate by adding sugar alone.

I hope you've been taking notes because as you listen to every chocolate company representative tell you that their product is the best, it is important to remember that they are often talking about different products, due to these forks-in-the-processing road.

No one writing about chocolate could begin without genuflecting at the altar of Hershey To American consumers. Hershey invented chocolate, or at least brought it to us in the form of wrapped bars. I called Natalie Bailey at their headquarters. Hershey's as giant as they are, moves slowly, but definitely towards coffee combination products.

"We do a Pot of Gold boxed chocolate in Canada, where it is quite popular, in fact the number one selling boxed chocolate," Natalie offered as proof of their increased coffee literacy. "Hershey's also makes a chocolate covered truffle which has a coffee center. We also have introduced two chocolate-flavored Great Premium Cafe non-dairy creamers, Swiss Mocha and Chocolate Amaretto."

After talking to Bailey; I glanced at Dr. Weil's book. I decided to consult another doctor, for a second opinion. This time I called the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, and made an appointment with Dr. Bruce Stillings, a food chemist.

Dr. Stillings immediately began, "The most important thing to decide when combining chocolate with coffee is whether you want to have a chocolate product with a coffee taste, or a coffee product with a chocolate taste." I liked this doctor. He didn't even mention health. He went on. "One flavor has to dominate." I am convinced he has a background in marriage counseling.

I asked Dr. Stillings what the percentage of coffee/chocolate combined products was. He paused and then gravely intoned, "In candy bars it is low. None of the top 10 chocolate bars have coffee flavor." Then his prognosis improved. "The best hope for chocolate/ coffee combination products is in the specialty market. There the numbers improve." It was as if he were examining a chocolate market x-ray.

"Why," I asked, "would specialty be different?" Dr. Stillings: "Because people are already used to chocolate and coffee in the same venue. Every gourmet coffee shop already has some form of chocolate product in it."

I started thinking about this. I don't know a single shop that doesn't have both a chocolate flavored drip coffee and almost every time I'm with a group of people in a coffee bar, someone orders a mocha. I phoned Mark Spini, whose company, Guittard is the oldest continuously family-owned chocolate business in the U.S., at least until someone older steps forward. I asked him if my observation about mocha popularity has any merit. "Definitely," he instantly responded. "The mocha is out front the most popular flavor of the milk-based espresso drinks." Spini then recommended I head for Gourmet Cup, one of his customers to see why.

"I don't touch chocolate," I replied sheepishly.

"Wow," he said amazed. Then in true 1990s let's-change-the-subject-directly style, he started telling me about chocolate. "The balance in the flavor between chocolate and coffee is the most important factor. It's up to the customer, but I can instantly tell the difference between a mocha from Gourmet Cup and one from Starbucks."

"You can?," I asked. "What's the difference?"

"Starbucks makes a more coffee-weighted cup. Gourmet Cup makes their's much more chocolaty." The way Spini said "Chocolaty" would have made a weaker man run to Gourmet Cup and order a double mocha immediately. But, I have a job to do.

Spini into my thoughts: "Retailers need to view their shops as adult high-end candy stores. There are many opportunities they're missing if they don't. This means more than great coffee drinks. How about cookies, other baked goods, candy. I know a retailer who has the most unbelievable chocolate-covered blueberries. They are sensational. Just that one item brings customers way out of their way every morning just to get that signature item."

Julie Davis, of Giradelli Chocolate thinks that coffee and chocolate have a "certain synergy." "Yeah, well I'm both, a coffee and chocoholic," She confessed to me over the anonymity of the phone one afternoon. "Even people who like straight coffee sit there with chocolate biscotti or some other form. Like any great market, we didn't really create it, customers did."

So how does Giradelli address it?

"We make a white mocha and biscotti, which has vanilla and coffee bits. As a stand-alone product, we make a double chocolate mocha milk chocolate bar with coffee and cookie bits inside." My mind wandered back to the differences in chocolates. "What kind of chocolate do you use?"

He didn't hesitate. "We use no chocolate liquor in these products. They are all cocoa butter based."

I was curious about how difficult it might be to design a product with both chocolate and coffee. Davis explained, "The most difficult part is making sure the chocolate doesn't cover the coffee flavor. We make six flavored coffees and, believe me, we spent a lot of tastings, in the lab, working with First Colony and just passing brewed cups around with each other to make sure the balance was right. We're very concerned that it still be coffee and not just a hot chocolate, which is another category entirely," she assured me.

And how about hot chocolates?

"Hot chocolates are growing in double digits. We have a new chocolate mocha hot chocolate I'm going to have to send you, along with our white mocha hot chocolate."

I decided to not tell her about my non-chocolate-consuming status, beginning to feel self-conscious, like the only non-drinker at a college reunion. I did, however, ask if a no-sugar chocolate product was available to those people who prefer aspartame.

"Sugar-free?," she asked in a still-friendly but somewhat incredulous manner. "Why no. They all have sugar." I was to get basically the same answer from every single supplier. Apparently sugar and chocolate are even more closely connected than coffee and chocolate.

Dillatante Chocolate's John Simpson put it more succinctly: "People want sugar and fat in their chocolate," he stated. "But, we're different," he chimed from his cellular phone as he walked the Seattle market. "Most companies settle for just the sweetness and use just a chocolate flavor. We do a real chocolate sauce, called Efamir. It's made with real chocolate cream, real chocolate butter. Most sauces have cocoa, but not cocoa butter." I wasn't sure what Simpson meant, but my lips were smacking and I could hear my stomach saying, "Ask for a sample."

"Our original sauce was actually too thick. We really had to thin it out just a bit to make it more practical to use," said Simpson. "Just head to SBC's (Seattle's Best Coffee). They also carry our chocolate-covered espresso beans, as do Nordstrom's and Caravalli."

Dillatante also makes a soft biscotti. "We found something interesting," said Simpson. "Most Americans weren't dunking the biscotti in their coffee like the Italians do. And hard biscotti is designed to be dunked. Company president Dena Davenport brought the recipe back from a Copenhagen bakery. "We've been making it ever since - in six flavors."

Dan Cox of Cox's Coffee Enterprises is a veritable coffee science think tank, much like the Rand Corporation but finding ways to use coffee instead of people. Cox alerted me about the potential dangers of most coffee flavorings. "Most use coffee slurries made from instant coffee." Warding off a connoisseur's panic attack, if this common. Dan rattled some papers over the phone. "I have case histories," he chuckled. Then he turned serious. "We make a pure extract from properly brewed coffee."

"We actually make three additional extracts, decaf, regular clear, and with hazelnut," said Cox. "Also, we do varietals, not so much to market the origin names, but because we've found that coffees from different regions can make a surprising difference depending upon the final use."

And what are some final uses?

"Our extracts are used in sorbets and ice creams, which, by the way, use different extracts. These extracts need to be designed and tested frozen." Frozen? That means "Yes." Dan broke into my thoughts. "We make our own ice cream here for testing."

"Ben and Jerry's accidentally used a double dose of our extract in their Mocha Fudge Ice Cream. The whole run had to be done over. I went over and tasted it. I think it's even better than the original. They're contemplating putting it out."

Cox agrees, there are similarities between coffee and chocolate, but says "There are differences that need to be considered as well. Chocolate really needs to be baked to round out its sweetness. That means designing the product so that coffee is added later unless you want to bake your coffee extract, not such a good idea."

Coffee Bean International's Bruce Mullins is one of those people who seems to know about everything in industry. One thing I like about Mullins is that he's in marketing but he's actually worked in retail. His timing isn't bad either. I'd just seen a release for CBI's new Panache products the day I got this story idea.

"We wanted to bring the Panache name onto some other products than just coffee," Mullins said. "We spent a lot of time on this. We decided to forgo last Christmas in order to spend the time to fine tune the flavors. We definitely wanted to bring out definitive upper end cocoa. We found that most products done from the chocolate industry use whey. I'm from coffee and I wanted a crema or a sensation of crema in the cup. We found that reducing whey and adding real non-fat milk added body and expense. But it was more risky to introduce a product that was undistinguished than one that costs a little more."

"We make four flavors. A double dark, which can make an awesome mocha base. A raspberry mocha which has coffee overtones. A cinnamon praline and a golden pecan. The last two have no coffee in them, but I like the cinnamon praline the best. I had to mention it." Okay, Bruce. I'll let you have that one.

Mullins had definite feelings about drip coffees and chocolate. "I think that drip coffees are definitely more difficult to flavor with chocolate. First, there are more people drinking drip coffee who skip milk, so it's unpredictable. And the balance is just too hard to get. I'm not convinced that coffee and chocolate by themselves are such a dynamite combination. The cream is almost a necessity."

"What about chocolate-covered coffee beans?"

"Well, the absolute best I've found are made by a company in New York called Koppers. They're not only great to eat. They make an excellent garnish. Retailers need to think of details. That's one of the easiest and best details."

Jim Glang of Crossroads Espresso just introduced a new line of Fantastico syrups. I asked Glang why he didn't use the Crossroads name for his syrups. "We decided it would be better to give distributors the more comfortable nationally known trademark rather than the name of an equipment distributor," he replied.

"What differentiates your product? I was sure Glang was going to tell me his was best because... Actually, we just preferred the dominant taste characteristic to be cocoa, rather than sugar, which is often the case in syrups. Accordingly our best chocolate offering is named Cocoa Mint, not Chocolate Mint."

When I told Glang of reading that mocha was supposedly started in Italy, Glang sprang to life. "I know it's politically incorrect not to credit Europe with every coffee innovation, but I think we invented it here! That doesn't mean that in Europe and even in North America, they haven't been enjoying chocolate and coffee for quite some time, but I just think that the mocha as it exists in North America is a home grown phenomenon."

It's been said that the best markets are synergistic blends. And modern food chemistry is getting pretty slick at putting two tastes together in one delivery, as Spini put it. Apparently it's time for coffee and chocolate. All know is that it's been a small torture getting all these samples of high-end chocolate and coffee products and having to look and not touch.

I haven't given up on my regimen of coffee and coffee alone, but it looks like I might be the only one at the care who is.

Kevin Sinnott publishes a coffee consumer and trade newsletter out of Warren-ville, Illinois. He can be reached at: (1)[phone].