Paris must be the global epicenter of this — the enormous exhibit for marvelous food and drink.

Four years ago, we were here at the same time as the salon of independent wine producers, and wandering through that was a kick in the pants.

Later in 2011, we visited the Salon Saveurs food fair, and seven months after that we went to the spring edition.

This time? The Salon du Chocolat … and it is exactly what it suggests. Well, aside from the “and we haven’t yet mentioned … top-end chocolate producers”.

More than 200 of them, in the same exhibition building (through the weekend) at the Porte de Versailles convention center and nearly all of them happy to give you a taste of their product.

Sometimes calling out for you to come over to their booth and have a taste. (Well, if you insist …)

We didn’t quite eat our body weight in world-class chocolate, but we certainly earned back the 14 euros ($16) we paid to enter the salon.

All that chocolate in so many forms … it was an amazing sight.

The salon is populated by chocolate producers who set up booths (many of them marvels of marketing and design) and staff them with employees who offer passers-by little tastes of their product and additional information on their products.

In a matter of minutes, you can taste chocolate with peppers, chocolate with ginger, chocolate with rum, chocolate with cheese … you can see chocolate in the shape of cell phones, animals, shoes, the Eiffel Tower (see above) and also in the shape of Champagne flutes and shot glasses — for eating after you drain the alcohol from them. (We may have crossed the “decadent” threshold there.)

And several chocolate fountains, as well as one chocolate “waterfall” — which ran dark chocolate on one side and milk chocolate on the other.

It is intoxicating, for a chocolate lover. Which is just about all of us, is it not?

“Kid in a candy store” seems appropriate, but the people at the Salon de Chocolat would be adults in a really up-market candy store that is pretty much entirely chocolate. And includes sugar-free chocolate and chocolate for diabetics.

The salons we have been to have featured live entertainment — mostly folk dancing from prominent cacao-producing countries — at the “Cacao Show” pavilion as well as at pastry seminars (en francaise) at one end of the room.

One of the talking points in the chocolate world is the rise of the Japanese high-end chocolate producers and 11 of them had a presence at the salon, most with chocolate so visually stunning you are tempted (unsuccessfully) not to eat what they have for sale.

We purchased a box of 25 chocolates from a French company named Hors des Sentiers Battus, which translates roughly as “outside the box”.

The little squares of chocolate are not quite an inch per side, and have colorful designs on the top that often reflect the flavoring of the chocolate — which is helpfully described in a tiny pamphlet. Such as … “peppermint, dark ganache” and “honey, dark ganache” and “lemon meringue ganache” and “tarragon ganache” and “lime juice and peel, dark ganache”.

We lasted about two-and-a-half hours and, amazingly, felt just fine because our tastings were so modest — just enough to get a sense of what the chocolate was about.

When we left, at about 1 p.m., the place was filling up with fans as well as chocoholics, all of them smiling, almost giddy, as they wandered the aisles of chocolate-lovers’ heaven.