Most people have a chocoholic in their life. It's the person who loves chocolate. But not just any chocolate. They go for the gourmet stuff. A Hershey bar just isn't nearly good enough.

Honestly, this makes them really easy and fun to shop for. Find some unusual, high quality chocolate and give it to them. Sometimes shopping really is too easy.

But what makes a high quality chocolate?

Dark chocolate is very popular with chocoholics. If the packaging states the cacao percentage it's probably a dark chocolate. 70-80% is pretty easy to find these days.

Brand does matter. Different brands use different qualities of cacao. Hershey's makes dark chocolate, but it just doesn't compare to what is made by other, better companies. How the beans are roasted, how the chocolate is made determines how good the chocolate will be.

A gift basket of gourmet chocolate is an obvious choice for a chocoholic. These can include plain chocolate bars, chocolate truffles, filled chocolates, chocolate dipped fruits and so forth. The range available is a sheer delight.

But you should never forget to consider a good chocolate cake or other dessert. Sure you can get these at the grocery store, but the quality varies tremendously. One of the most amazing things about the Internet is that you can order fabulous foods online, and they will still be wonderful when they get to you.

So how do you figure out what a good gourmet chocolate anything is? That's not something you necessarily know without knowing a bit about the product already.

This brings us to the next advantage of the Internet. You can read all kinds of reviews online and find out what real people think of the product. You can know if the quality is good, if the delivery was handled well, if the product is likely to delight a chocolate lover. People do rave about the things they really love. They also rant if something goes wrong. The information is there and you can take advantage of it.

The only trouble with buying chocolate as a gift is if you truly love it yourself. Keeping your hands off someone else's chocolate is very hard, especially if you keep it around a day or so before giving as a gift. It's much easier when the chocolate is just delivered to the recipient, but then you don't even have a chance that they will offer you a piece.

Stephanie Foster runs / because, as a chocoholic, how could she not? Her site offers a delightful selection of gourmet chocolates at her site that would make a great shopping starting point.