At Tony Caputo’s Market and Deli, purchasing a holiday gift of chocolate is not a trivial indulgence. Amid its wisely cultivated selection of what really are the kings and queens of the chocolate world is the sense that a gift of food can be a deeply memorable, thoughtful, and socially conscientious gesture during this holiday season.

For between $25 and $30, give or take the sales tax, one can assemble a package of truly phenomenal chocolate: An Amano Guayas bar, made in Orem featuring cacao beans indigenous to the Ecuadorean floodplains of the river named on the product; the beautifully balanced taste profile of the Italian-made Amedei Chuao bar, and a five-piece assortment of Chocolatier Blue’s creations in which every drop and every ingredient is naturally sourced, right down to the color of these confectionary masterpieces.

Chocolate does not have to be a pretentious fancy nor the representation of a default gift that one goes to, unable to think of anything specific to buy for someone on his or her gift list. Instead, the gift of food – especially when it comes from independent producers and makers who are as passionate about nurturing the sustainability of their farms and suppliers as they are about providing wholesome nutritious goods exceptional in quality and surprisingly reasonable in price – becomes a profound gesture. Heroes of the food industry — such as Amano’s Art Pollard in Orem, San Francisco’s Christopher Blue, and Alessio and Cecelia Tessieri of Italy’s Amedei — give consumers the capacity to add a meaningful touch of wholesome happiness and satisfaction to the holidays – if not to bring back a sense of humanity and sanity to the whole season.

In Utah, Amano has had an extraordinary year. It won five awards this year from the London Academy of Chocolate, which, in effect, translates to this local producer being represented in one-third of the top 15 chocolate products anywhere in the world. While its Madagascar bar has become synonymous with its growing reputation, Amano has created a new class of chocolate bar epitomized for its attention to masterful hand-crafting techniques. The Guayas bar, for example, is a 70 percent dark chocolate bar featuring an Ecuadorian cacao bean that is grown nowhere else on the planet. The bar’s floral aroma is exquisitely tempered with textured smoky notes along with nuanced flavors of green banana and blackberry. Other bars of spectacular note are the Ocumare, Jembrana, and Dos Rios.

Like Amano, Amedei has cultivated close relationships with plantations and farmers dedicated to producing single-origin beans of rare quality. For example, the Chuao is grown in the specific microclimate conditions of the Venezuelan area by this name. Matt Caputo’s appraisal is rhapsodic: “Its complex, layered flavor reveals notes of overripe red fruits, plums, and black cherries along with nuances of almonds and a creamy texture.”

He adds that the bar’s production is a first in the world because it was created using only the Chuao beans from Venezuela. “There is absolutely no cut with lower grade criollos, trinitario, or forestero,” he says.

At two dollars per piece, Blue’s chocolates are as affordable if not even more so than some of the best-known — and inferior — mass-produced name brands. And, to wit, all of his packaging follows the same rigorous set of environmentally-sustainable principles. His holiday season flavors available for only a limited time include: caramel, peanut butter & jelly, palet d’or, pistachio, sage honey, chili, hazelnut, lemon, passion fruit, apple cider, egg nog, gingerbread, pumpkin, cranberry with sage, peppermint, pear with thyme, flying goat coffee, chestnuts, grapefruit with rosemary, and rum-soaked currants.

With Blue and other great chocolate makers such as Amano and Amedei, knowledgeable consumers and bona fide connoisseurs of truly great chocolate believe the quality standards and the never-compromising commitment to exceptional natural ingredients make the price a genuine bargain. This is no idle assertion. A typical truffle from a well-known international outfit which positions itself as a gourmet chocolatier (hint: it starts with a “g”) costs as much (if not more) and its ingredient content is replete with artificial colorings, compounds, and flavorings. Meanwhile, Chocolatier Blue’s product follows its natural commitment right down to the coloring which is made from dehydrated fruits and vegetable skins.

The store’s chocolate collection is diverse and extensive, featuring some 275 different products and including well-known international chocolate makers such as Pralus, Domori, Michel Cluizel, and others.

And, gift certificates are available for chocolate tasting classes (offered at beginner’s, intermediate, and advanced levels). As for products such as cheese and chocolate, the classes are a good channel for understanding how globalization has shaped the food economy, especially in the ways in which pure, honest, simple cultural food traditions are being standardized, repackaged, and sold utterly different from their origins.

Most focused tasting classes are just $25. For example, at a recent beginner’s chocolate tasting class, the 43 participants sampled 11 different chocolates including the products cited above.

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