Up until recently, a vocabulary specific to premium chocolate did not appreciably exist other than copycats stealing terms from oenophiles or, worse, rote foodie talk which usually boils everything down to ‘tasting-by-number’ & meaningless spittle (hence the C-spot's^®List of Banned Words). There is still a long way to go on this but the C-spot^® basically devises a nomenclature in the spirit of elevating the field by coining several terms.

'Barsmith' represents but one (for some others, please see Q&A #3 in this interview). It refers to those who work from the raw material cocoa; it replaces the clunky-sounding “bean-to-bar” chocolate makers (bean assigning a humble if not altogether cheap connotation right up there with ‘pinto’ & ‘fava’).

The only real question: What took so long?

"To sweeten the deal, can we send you some of our chocolate?" Ahhh, do you really think the C-spot^® needs more chocolate? (OK, sometimes that's a lie -- damn habit.)

Plus the pricing, which would strike some with sticker shock, intrigued: $50 for a 25 gram bar. Is this stuff really worth it & how did they set the price at that amount?

That the cacáo crafted into chocolate by Barsmiths™ only comes from very exclusive properties, single-estate, meticulously researched (sometimes using the C-spot^®Chocolate Atlas as a navigation tool) prior to personally procuring it while on business trips, spells highly s-e-l-e-c-t-i-v-e. And just enough to pack a couple suitcases means extremely limited editions.

This particular bar arrived in butcher block paper, the essence of anti-packaging. None of the paisley / floral wallpaper wrappers so in vogue at the moment. It speaks either dirt effin poor or filthy pajama rich.

The revenue model further reinforces the exclusivity to the "branding", such as it is.

Barsmiths™ engages in neither advertising nor promotions (how refreshing). Just the opposite... they take a fierce Pynchon-worthy tack -- simply word of mouth. No store front, no factory outlet, website or shingle. Most "sales" are conducted on golf courses, over lunch or dinners at frequented restaurants, during fundraising telethons for a local prep school, cocktail parties… often with familiar faces who venture to spend that amount as a novelty or a dare &, in this case, because Barsmiths™ never offer samples ("the biggest mistake a business can make… you never see free samples of caviar now do you, and that's just salted fish litter… restaurants don't even let you nibble on one tiny egg as they do a swig of wine for your approval"). This no-sample rule applies even to family & friends! ("Hey, we worked hard on these bars. We're not gonna give 'em away. Besides, if you don't charge people they'll think it's cheap and if you don't charge rich people a lot, they get insulted that you think they're cheap. And the same holds for our kids. We want to encourage them to respect chocolate, really good high quality chocolate, and not load up on too much sugared candy.")

Theirs is a personal network that rivals in one respect the burgeoning farmers markets sprouting in every major city in the USA where, in one instance, tender succulent baby greens cost $32 a pound. Call it 'food fetish', people belly over & buck up for it.

So establishing a $50 benchmark price for a piece that weighs about an ounce & a half was simple math for these craftsmen whose day job is a seat in the financial services sector: "Time is money. I value my time. I just calculated what I normally make per hour and translated that to what it takes me to make chocolate… Besides, peole rock back a few single-malts, some at $800+ per bottle, draw on a smoke at over $100 a cigar, & then get to feast on chocolate at only 50 bucks? Huh? In light of al that, it’s cheap. I should be charging more."

How high can this go & how long will it last?

"As long as we're having fun. Once we stop enjoying ourselves, we're out."

For those who can afford it, that's some mighty sound business strategy.