Bissinger’s

The original Bissinger’s store in St. Louis, a dark wood-lined jewelry store of a chocolate shop, is no more. There are other, more modern branches in the St. Louis area, but it’s not for the St. Louis bricks-and-mortar chocolate shops that we sing our highest praises.

It’s for the fruit. Blackberries and raspberries, in particular. Surrounded by fondant and coated with dark or milk chocolate. The fondant combines with the juices from the fresh, ripe berries to create a luscious syrup. These are similar in concept to chocolate cherry cordials, except the fake, processed cherries are replaced by in-season blackberries or raspberries, and that makes all the difference. These are simply among the finest candies imaginable.

Bissinger’s makes many other kinds of chocolates, and some are better than others. The raspberry, blackberry, and strawberry cremes and soft caramel filled chocolates are excellent. The butter toffee left us cold.

The raspberry chocolates are available for a brief time around early July, and they taste great in both the milk and dark chocolate versions. The blackberries can be purchased for a couple of weeks around Labor Day; fresh blackberries and dark chocolate seem to have been made for each other.

All are available by mail order. Because of the delicate nature of the berries, we recommend overnight delivery, which will send the cost of a box above $50 (and they note that some berry-juice leakage is inevitable; we find that leakage is minimized with overnight delivery, and not much of a problem in any case; just devour the leaking candies first).