(FORTUNE Small Business) – Adam Smith was once the sort of fellow who enjoyed regular old candy—a Snickers, say, or a Hershey bar. Nowadays, with his palate all grown up, the 37-year-old derides those American chocolates for their "shallow, upfront sweetness" and sneers at their "short-lived empty kind of flavor." He much prefers the "flavor profile" of imported chocolate bars (average price: $4). "I've discovered a wonderful world of complexity," gushes the owner of Fog City News, a popular San Francisco retailer of foreign chocolates and periodicals.

If you think fine wine attracts snobs, wait until you encounter your first chocolate "enthusiast," as Smith calls himself. "It's not like my parents were Swiss or German," he points out. Smith's love affair with chocolate dates back only to the 2001 vintage. He was then two years into running Fog City News, which he founded as a giant newsstand carrying some 3,000 magazines, including about 700 from abroad.

The store was "plugging along, breaking even" when friends urged Smith to sell candy from their native Canada, including Smarties (similar to M&M's but with a thicker shell). The imports were a hit, so Smith kept adding others; he now stocks 225 chocolate bars from 15 countries. Fog City's revenues rose 20% last year, to $500,000, and the business turned "modestly profitable," Smith says. "When people say, 'Wow, $13.95 for a candy bar?' we have to tell them that it is a chocolate bar, and that is totally different," says Fog City employee George Slavik, 27.

In a world overstocked with loud-mouthed connoisseurs of coffee and wine and olive oil and cheese, Smith wants more people to take chocolate more seriously. Looking to get him peeved? Refer to "cocoa bean" the way most people do. He uses the technically correct "cacao" when referring to the bean, the pods, or the tree—much like the insufferable Starbucks baristas, who, when you order a large coffee, chirp back, "Oh, you mean a grande?"

It should go without saying that Smith won't let you use lazy colloquialisms such as "really sweet" or "kinda minty" when considering a chocolate bar's qualities. (Those were my descriptions, to which Smith replied, after a long pause, "Well, that's a start.") At chocolate tastings, which he holds for his seven employees on Tuesday afternoons, Smith prefers the sophisticated parsing of "fruit notes" and "dairy notes." Is there a high-gloss sheen? Good, then the chocolate bar is well-tempered. Dull-looking? Uh-oh, check the edges for air bubbles. Smith has compiled a database that includes more than 1,500 chocolate confections, catalogued by such characteristics as aroma, appearance and texture, and flavor and finish. "The only reason chocolate isn't as popular as wine or coffee," he pouts, "is because it doesn't have the psychoactive qualities." (I know women and Labradors who would disagree, but let's just say the effects aren't quite so pronounced.)

Recent studies have shifted focus from the psyche to the body, finding that chocolate, or at least the darker varieties, can contribute to a healthier heart. Tragically, that virtually ensures that chocolate will go the way of such suddenly salubrious menu items as pinot noir and fatty fish. Soon each of us will need to have an opinion about, say, single-bean chocolates vs. blends. We'll be able to savor the differences between major cocoa-growing (make that cacao-growing) regions. "If you're a nondrinker, you can still get into something esoteric," says Fog City customer Peter Lakis, 31. Clearly he is working toward becoming an annoying aficionado. He now admits to buying two chocolate bars a week.