Chocolate

DABOV's chocolate shelf splits into two families, both chosen to live alongside what we roast and brew. The first is drinking chocolate: Hot Chocolate in TRADITIONAL, WHITE, TOFFEE, and TIRAMISU, plus a summer-facing Ice Chocolate line in YOGHURT and COCONUT with an ASORTI sampler — and HOT and ICE mix packs if you'd rather not pick a lane. The second family is confections: chocolate dragees in cherry, stracciatella, and almond-and-cinnamon, and glass jars of orange peel, plums, and ginger enrobed in chocolate.

How do I choose between them?

Think occasion. Drinking chocolate is a ritual purchase — a mug you make, the cold-weather counterpart to your morning coffee, or its iced replacement in July. The confections are for the table: the paper-boxed dragees travel well as gifts, and the jarred fruit-in-chocolate holds its own next to an espresso the way biscotti never quite manages. Chocolate-covered orange peel beside a rich, chocolatey Brazilian coffee is a pairing that explains itself on the first sip.

Both families come from the same instinct that drives a specialty coffee house: cocoa, like coffee, rewards doing fewer things properly. If you're browsing gourmet chocolate online for yourself or a gift, start with a mix pack on the drinking side or a dragee box on the eating side — each is a low-stakes tour of its half of the shelf.