HUSBAND and wife team Wesley and Toni Thorne can pinpoint exactly when they fell in love with chocolate.

Back in 2003, the Clifton-based couple took a few months out from their busy lives, and set off travelling around Europe in a bid to "rediscover" themselves.

In fact, they discovered the magic of chocolate. Not your average, run-of-the-mill bars of Nestle or Cadbury – what Toni and Wesley discovered was a specialist, secretive, almost mystical world of chocolatiers.

Throughout France and Belgium, Toni and Wesley discovered that each village had its own little chocolatier, and each of these sweet-toothed Gallic alchemists were clinging tightly to their own special recipes.

When they returned home to Bristol, Toni decided she couldn't return to a life as an admin worker, and Wesley felt he'd had enough of working in a photographic darkroom. So they decided to set up their own chocolate shop.

But somehow they were overtaken by sweets. After launching the company with a simple barrow on Corn Street, they quickly realised there was a growing nostalgic trend for buying sweets from jars, and their business, Treasure Island Sweets, quickly flourished – moving after just two years to a permanent shop within St Nicholas Market.

But now Wesley, 36, and Toni, 35, have finally achieved their original goal of opening a specialist chocolate emporium – right next door to their thriving sweet shop.

The new shop, A Bar of Chocolate, will officially open its doors to the public with a special tasting day on Saturday.

I went along for a sneak preview, and was immediately entranced by the shelves filled with specialist chocolate products – ranging from novelty Father's Day gifts, including a chocolate tool kit, all the way through to the shop's own take on the chocolate orange.

"It's the nicest chocolate orange you'll ever taste," Wesley says. "Because it's made by coating real segments of orange in chocolate."

It sits neatly beside the equally quirky bags of chocolate-coated gooseberries and white chocolate-covered strawberries.

The shop is alive with the warm fresh smell of chocolate, which seems to wrap you like a blanket from the moment you step inside – thanks mostly to the drinks of crocchino bubbling away behind the counter.

"Crocchino is an Italian delicacy," Wesley explains. "It's the equivalent for lovers of hot chocolate to what espresso means for coffee lovers. It's a short but intense, rich burst of chocolate. I think the people of Bristol will love it."

But Wesley and Toni are devoting most of their attention to developing their own unique chocolate bars.

"We're importing in special Belgium chocolate, which we are melting down and resetting into bars with our own flavourings," Toni explains, as she takes a tray of rose-flavoured bars from the shelf.

"At the moment we're in the process of trying to decide which flavours people like best, by offering lots of tastings to customers.

"We expect the rose bars to be popular – they have a very strong rose taste, because we use crystalline rose petals in them.

"We're also producing a range of other bars, such as butterscotch, mango, cranberry, caramelised fudge and fun kids' bars with Dolly Mixtures embedded into them."

Wesley says they have spent months developing the flavourings.

"We did it at home for our own amusement for a long time," he says. "Then when the neighbouring shop to our exiting sweet shop became available, we remembered that our original idea seven years ago had been to set up a chocolate shop."

The Thornes have also made a great effort to stock a wide range of chocolates suitable for those with nut or gluten allergies, and sugar-free chocolates for diabetics.

"We were keen to ensure we stocked something for everyone," Toni says. "There is a sort of mystique to chocolate shops – a real magic to them. We wanted everyone to be able to experience a little of that magic when they come in here."

For more information, visit the website at www.abarof.co.uk.