By the age of 10, Christopher Blue already had sampled a cosmopolitan menu that included dishes from Spain, Cuba, England, Africa and India – all at his family’s self-sustaining farm in western Nebraska.

“We ate practically everything but American food,” Chris recalls. “Growing up, we never knew artificial ingredients. I never knew what it was to eat at McDonald’s, which was a good thing.” His mother and grandmother, who had been trained in European culinary schools – as well as his grandfather, who retired at an early age from the U.S. Navy – made his exposure to so many different ethnic cuisines possible.

That profound respect for food and nature sits at the core of Chocolatier Blue. This Alpine, Utah shop features chocolates made exclusively from fresh ingredients – everything from the cacao bean and hazelnuts to passion fruits and apples and to cream and butter –specifically sourced from single-origin farms and plantations rigorously dedicated to the genuinely pristine principles of organic agriculture.

And, after a long journey – which included stops in Chicago, Fort Myers, and Boulder – Chris, 28, has found an ideal home for his business in Alpine, Utah. Today, his chocolates also are available online as well as Trotter’s to Go in Chicago, the Sundance Resort, and at Caputo’s Market and Deli.

‘Absolutely’ no artificial ingredients

The chocolatier’s passion for his product is matched by his commitment to live the Blue family’s legacy and the importance of supporting local farms at the forefront of organic agriculture.

For the 2,500 pieces of chocolate made every day, Chris ensures that “absolutely” no artificial flavorings, extracts, compounds, or purees are used. Front and center, of course, is the single-origin chocolate, grown at a Venezuelan plantation where the farmers ferment, sun dry, and process the pure bean. For example, the juice from an entire passion fruit will go into just one chocolate.

Mindful of his days at Charlie Trotter’s Chicago restaurant where waste was, indeed, an obscene word, Chris follows that creed even down to the coloring used on his chocolates. “It’s completely natural. We make the coloring from dehydrated fruits and vegetable skins,” he explains.

And, as for the packaging, Chris spent eight months – finally settling on a California company – that makes boxes, inserts, and shipping containers from recycled material as well as soy ink. “It was expensive,” he says, “but I knew that much of the most widely available recycled materials, made mostly in China, were not manufactured under eco-friendly conditions.”

Integrity, respect, excellence

Indeed, Chris’s formative years helped him cultivate the profound ethical implications that would ultimately drive his business plan. In Nebraska, seeing families driven from their farms replaced by corporate behemoths that saw little, if any, need for principles respectful of animal and nature, he already understood the ramifications of what he would face in his training and work in the culinary world.

At the renowned French Pastry School in Chicago, he received a broad-based education, where he enjoyed everything but “wedding cakes.” Soon after, he was hired at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago – the epitome of the excellence model in the restaurant industry.

Chris was a bit taken aback by a few employees who didn’t seem to fully understand their craft or the opportunity to work at such a great restaurant. “At Trotter’s, there always was an eye on you and some people didn’t know what they were doing and Trotter would say, ‘I’m not giving you a reference,’” he says. However, those who rose to the standards received the benefit of Trotter’s good word such as a sous chef who wanted to work at one of Spain’s great restaurants. “Trotter made the call, arranged for an apartment, and told him ‘you’re ready to go,’” he recalls.

For Chris, an appreciation of science was as important as the comprehensive acknowledgement of sound culinary principles. “I was amazed that even someone who had worked there for ten years didn’t understand the difference between a peanut allergy and a nut allergy,” he explains. “If you mix the two, you have a big problem.”

His first project at Trotter’s was to replace the macaroons – “a cookie that resembled a hamburger filled with ganache and jam” – which he felt were boring. Fully engaged with the science of chocolate, he experimented with tempering the chocolate to get that ideal shine and crisp snap so it would be used in a kitchen environment where temperatures often reach one hundred degrees. The results were warmly received and Chris became the restaurant chocolatier.

At Trotter’s, he was an enthusiastic, passionate student, strengthened by the work ethic that he learned in Nebraska from his family. Meanwhile, Chris was flying every week to Lincoln to see his mother who was terminally ill with melanoma. Unfortunately, he was at work when he received the news over the phone about his mother’s death. “I already had my plane ticket for that evening,” he remembers. “After the call, I just went back to work and finished my shift before I flew home. I felt a lot of guilt about that.”

In some respects, Trotter’s had been extension of his home in Nebraska. “There was the respect for the animal and for the farmer,” Chris says. “I remember farmers coming into Chicago so Trotter could personally purchase their eggs. The same was with pork farmers. There was very little trash in the restaurant because fresh ingredients were so expensive and it was important to eliminate the cost of waste in every possible way. Occasionally, Trotter would tip over the trashcans to see what was in them. Not one bone or piece would be wasted.”

A challenging journey of patience and determination

After two years, Chris had reached his plateau at the famed restaurant and decided to seek a new venue as a chocolatier. “Trotter was supportive,” he says. “He told me that I could come back any time and he said that whenever I got started in my own venture that he wanted to buy from me.”

Another family tragedy, however, occurred just as Chris had accepted a position at the famed Norman Love Confections business in Ft. Myers, Florida. His stepfather, who had been deeply depressed, shot himself. Hesitant about moving, he decided to start the new job, which included a two-year commitment.

If Trotter’s was magical, then his experience at Norman Love was shocking in its disappointment. “I was absolutely blown away by the waste,” he explains. “And, they used entirely artificial ingredients and preservatives. I had never even been exposed to these ingredients.”

Struggling to see through his two-year commitment, Chris campaigned unsuccessfully for sourcing locally grown ingredients from organic farms. After 11 months, he quit, deciding finally to open his business.

The process was not easy. With a comfortably sized trust fund, he decided that he would not take out a business loan and that he would find a shop committed to farmers dedicated to sustainable organic agriculture. An exhaustive trip across the country with stops on both coasts proved futile.

Chris thought that Boulder, Colorado was the ideal location because of its substantial organic farming movement. However, the city’s ongoing transformation was unsettling, driven by developers who saw little value in what he was planning. Even, his offer of paying the entire first year’s lease up front failed to attract a deal. “I’ll never forget the last developer who told me no,” he recalls. “This guy was born and raised in Boulder and he told me that they don’t want privately owned businesses. He didn’t seemed fazed when I told him how this was wrecking the community.”

Chris and his fiancée Jessica Steeve, a graduate of the University of Iowa’s art school and the technician behind the presentation of the chocolate, then made the 10-hour road trip to Utah, thinking that the Sundance Festival and Institute made an ideal ethical companion for their business plan. The location in Alpine, conveniently accessible from the Salt Lake Valley and ideally close to Sundance, was secured quickly.

A story in every chocolate

His commitment has been uncompromised. The cream comes from the family-owned Clover Cove farm in his home state, where the cows are grass fed and allowed to graze freely on land untainted by pesticides and fertilizers. “What’s unique is that the cows are milked in their natural outdoors habitat,” Chris explains. “We call them up, they milk the cows, and the next day, we have the cream.”

The butter comes from 5-Star in California, completely raw with the highest butterfat content in the world. “They use 14 gallons of milk to make one pound,” he adds.

Hazelnuts come from an Ennis, Oregon farm that are purchased raw and roasted at the Alpine store where the paste is then made. Other nuts – including macadamia, pistachio, almonds, and cashews – come from California farms where they also are roasted at Chocolatier Blue.

And, Utah farmers play an equally significant role, supplying Chris with pumpkins, apples, cranberries, mint, pears and pecans.

Every chocolate made by Chris tells a story and the recurring theme is a tribute to his family’s unique legacy.