Recchiuti Chocolate, a boutique maker in San Francisco, uses thin, beautiful chocolate coatings on unusual candies. XOX Truffles feature bergamot, which is the distinctive flavor of Earl Grey tea. Photos by Pam Spaulding

Mmmmm. I've always thought that mixing salt with chocolate was an intriguing idea. Butterfingers and Reese's cups certainly have their appeal. It seems that someone very talented could do that salty thing in a big way.

Someone has.

Michael Recchiuti (pronounced re-KYOO-tee), a boutique chocolate maker in San Francisco, is doing wonders with the creamiest, darkest, most luxurious-tasting chocolate � encased in thin, exquisitely beautiful chocolate coatings � that may be the best you've ever tasted.

He's adding crunchy fleur de sel (sea salt) to luscious caramel and enrobing the package in a thin layer of bittersweet chocolate so intense that it is perfectly matched to the straight-on flavors of the salt and "burnt" sugars. Be assured, the high-quality chocolate flavor and texture does not get lost in this morsel. Yum.

This is Valentine's candy at its absolute finest . . . or is it?

That's a tough question these days. Suddenly there is a lot of exceptionally fine, and unusual, chocolate around for celebrating Valentine's Day.

Ginger-flavored deep chocolate in a white-chocolate heart sprinkled with gold dust. Deep-brown, toasted sesame seeds (with a polka-dot cover) enrich an intensely rich bittersweet chocolate filling. Truffles flavored with bitter orange. Chocolate coffee cups with white-chocolate foam, all made with organic ingredients.

The last few years have seen a boomlet in American-based chocolate makers, described in Food & Wine magazine as "exceptional and idiosyncratic." They have taken up the European tradition of selling finely made, freshly made, artistically made chocolates, combining the highest-quality chocolate with flavors, fillings, shapes and decorations that reflect an all-American sense of adventure.

Here's how to order exotic chocolates Michael Recchiuti: http://www.recchiutichocolates.com/ or (800) 500-3396. Exquisitely beautiful filled chocolates in a wide array of flavors that will make you think, "These can't be good." But they are delicious, very dark chocolates, whose unlikely-sounding fillings are memorable and subtle. My favorites: fleur de sel, grapefruit-tarragon, sur de lago and ginger heart. Various sizes, very expensive, starting at $20 for 8 pieces. XOX Truffles: http://www.xoxtruffles.com/ or (415) 421-4814. All truffles. Moderately expensive. Irregularly shaped truffles look more like rocks than candy, but these small, hand-rolled truffles are coated with an ultra-thin coating. That, and the filling, are melt-in-your-mouth creamy. Dark chocolate is ultra-dark. White chocolate is delicious, too. Don't miss the totally-vegan truffle made with soy milk. Hey! That's good for you, right? My favorite: caramel. Ricard Chocolat Ricard Chocolat: http://www.ricardchocolat.com/ or (212) 626-5885. Made-to-order filled chocolates created from organic Madagascar chocolate and other organic ingredients. My grouping included more white chocolate, many of which are elegantly designed. Ricard makes the cutest little espresso-flavored chocolates in a coffee-cup shape with white-chocolate "foam" on the top. My favorite: Dulche de leche, but I didn't get to taste the port-infused, 72 percent-bitter, encrusted-in-roasted-crystallized-cinnamon almonds. Expensive, starting at $18.50 for a quarter-pound. Jubilee Chocolate Jubilee Chocolates: http://www.jubileechocolates.com/ or (800) 747-4808. Featured this month in Gourmet magazine, which cites the mint chocolates as "the best we've ever had." Located in the Philadelphia area, the folks at Jubilee buy local mint, raspberries and honey for their chocolate fillings, and donate 7 percent of their profits to fund educational field trips for local public schoolchildren. My favorite: The mint, with an aroma as gentle and herbal as backyard mint, not wowie-zowie like super-minty gum or candy. Moderately expensive.

Take, for instance, Ricard Chocolat of New York.

American Richard Muszynski assembles his candy in mixtures that include the campfire combination of graham cracker-marshmallow-dried cherry (enrobed in 72 percent bitter chocolate) and/or the yin-yang combo of roasted habanero pepper infused in dark chocolate and covered in dark chocolate. Oh, and there's peanut mousse, which, though covered with white chocolate and described as "Italian stone ground," sounds and tastes suspiciously like Reese's to me.

Obviously, nontraditional flavors have crept into the box along with caramel and cognac.

Philadelphia's Jubilee Chocolates sells a deep-chocolate candy flavored with star anise, and one with lavender honey. Bergamot � the flavor of Earl Grey tea � is featured in XOX Truffles. In addition to the "Atkins-diet approved chocolate-covered popcorn," Ricard Chocolat sells amber brut champagne chocolate. Recchiuti's includes rose caramel and cardamom nougat in some of his boxes, and the best of the bunch is grapefruit-tarragon.

For many people, it takes quite a leap of faith to enter into a world of unheard-of flavors, especially if you're shelling out as much as $60 a box.

But your blind faith will be rewarded. The flavorings are not at all medicinal or unnatural. Usually, they are a gentle aromatic component to an otherwise total chocolate experience.

In most cases, the flavors are added to intensely rich, super-creamy, ultra-chocolaty fillings. These fillings are called "ganache" (gahn-AHSH). Ganache is a mixture of semisweet (or bittersweet) chocolate and cream that can be used to pour over ice cream, to ice cakes or to dip in chocolate coating, depending on its formula.

European tastes lean toward bitter chocolate, and most of these boutique chocolatiers follow that route. Ricard Chocolat, for instance, uses a base that is 72 percent chocolate � a very intense mix with just enough sugar to make it palatable.

As a result, the dark-chocolate coatings and ganache fillings have an assertive chocolate flavor � no shrinking violet, as it were, to herbal tones that might come from, say, ginseng. Eating one does not compare to eating opera creams or our fondant-style bourbon balls, where chocolate must compete with sugar and fruit. In these combos, when you bite in, you taste (and usually see) dark chocolate, but you get a whiff of something more complex. Is that lemon verbena?

It may seem at first bizarre to add these flavors to chocolate, until you realize that great chocolate often offers its own fruity, floral nuances.

Bite into Recchiuti's sur de lago chocolate, for example, and you may work hard to identify what fruit it is that you're tasting. In truth, it's all chocolate � a single-source chocolate coating covering not-too-sweet chocolate ganache with tiny bits of cacao nibs. But there's a definite hint of cherry overtones.

Great European-style chocolates are known for their shiny, lustrous coatings and their fresh quality. These chocolates are not made to sit on a shelf � and neither are these American-made chocolates. They are perishable.

But don't despair. If your chocolates take a day or two more than the recommended consumption time, they won't spoil. The chocolate begins to dry out a little, the creamy fillings might form a few sugar crystals. But all is not lost.

They'll still be absolutely delicious.

Is there a food or cooking ingredient you love? Tell us! Write: Sarah Fritschner, The Courier-Journal, 525 W. Broadway, P.O. Box 740031, Louisville, Ky. 40201-7431. Or e-mail: [email protected].

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