Orem » Not quite two years old, Amano Artisan Chocolate is just an infant in the centuries-old world of dark chocolate.

Yet the Utah County company, led by owner and head chocolatier Art Pollard, already is earning accolades.

Amano was awarded two gold medals at the prestigious 2008 San Francisco International Chocolate Salon and a bronze from the Academy of Chocolate in London, the highest medal given to an American company for dark chocolate. Amano was a 2007 finalist for "outstanding new product" in New York City's Fancy Food Show. And at another U.S. competition, Pollard was named "most gifted chocolatier."

This week, Amano rolls out its new Indonesian chocolate, called Jembrana. And at least one local expert is calling the natural nutty-flavored offering another impressive creation.

"It could be his best one yet," said Matt Caputo, with Tony Caputo's Market & Deli, in Salt Lake City. The specialty store carries nearly 300 different chocolate varieties from around the world. Amano has become one of the store's top sellers, second only to the popular Amadei brand from Tuscany.

No one would have expected such high quality chocolate from Orem or Pollard, a 40-year-old over-achiever and software developer. (He writes the underlying technology for major computer search engines).

A native of New Mexico and later a resident of Seattle, Pollard attended Brigham Young University earning a degree in Near Eastern archeology. But he was just a few credits shy of degrees in photography and English.

While attending classes, he had a job designing and building equipment for the BYU physics department. It was there that Pollard began researching -- and building -- his own chocolate refiner. "I wasn't planning on doing it as a career, I just wanted to make some chocolate," he said.

During his Hawaiian honeymoon, Pollard tasted a piece of gourmet chocolate from Belgium and had a chocolate epiphany of sorts.

"As soon as I tasted it I could see there was a whole new level of potential," he said.

When the couple returned, Pollard's chocolate making went into high gear, each night he would make batches in his home kitchen and share the results with friends.

Clark Goble, Pollard's business partner, saw the potential and challenged his friend to turn his passion into a business.

"One Christmas, Art had made all these bars and they tasted really, really good," remembered Goble who met Pollard as a BYU student. "I thought 'this is better than most of the high-end chocolate bars you find at the stores.' "

Goble also knew his friend's excitement -- maybe obsession -- when taking on a new endeavor. Whether it's extreme four-wheeling or photography, "Art just really fixates on it and if he doesn't become the best, he is at least there at the top with them," said Goble.

In 2004, Pollard attended a confectionery school in Germany and traveled to numerous factories in Europe learning flavor secrets and searching for equipment.

Most all of the machinery in Amano's Orem factory came from Europe and is nearly a century old. The mélanger was built around the 1930s, the winnowing machine was build in the 1920s. Always the handyman, Pollard completely restored the equipment, which he proudly shows off to visitors.

From the very beginning, Amano's niche has been single-origin chocolates -- chocolates made from cocoa beans grown in a single region of a country or on a single farm. It also is one of only a dozen "bean-to-bar" producers who does everything from purchase and roast its own beans to molding and packaging the chocolate.

Pollard is picky about the beans he selects and his high standards show.

"That's his strength," said Caputo. "He finds the most incredible beans."

Amano makes only dark chocolate bars, containing 70 percent cocoa with no additional flavorings or additives. The line-up includes chocolate from Madagascar; two from Venezuala and now the Indonesian. (See details XX)

Sold for $6.95 for two-ounce bars, Amano is a definite splurge purchase. But unlike typical store-bought bars that can be eaten in a sitting, a single square of Amano will satisfy a chocolate craving and one bar can last for days.

Matthew Hamby admits to having a chocolate obsession, keeping a bag of 10 or 15 different gourmet chocolate bars in the pantry at any one time.

"Most of the time there is always an Amano bar," he said. His favorite is Amano's Ocumare bar. "You can just taste the land where it was grown and all the different fruit flavors."

Like many people, Steve Rosenberg, owner of Liberty Heights Fresh said he was skeptical when Pollard gave him some of his chocolates for Christmas.

"I didn't have very high expectations," he said. In fact, Rosenberg set the gift aside and forgot about it well into January. But when he did, he was pleasantly surprised.

"It's damn fine chocolate."