Where to Find Great Chocolate on Kauai | The Chocolate Professor

Hawaii is the only state where cacao is commercially grown, thanks to its warm tropical climate. While cacao is also grown in Maui, O’ahu and the Big Island, Kauai is nicknamed the “Garden Isle” for its especially fertile soil and is home to several small-scale cacao farms.

Lydgate Farms

Lydgate Farms is the largest and most established cacao farm and chocolate maker in Kauai, with 46 acres and 3,500 cacao trees. They planted their first cacao trees in 2002 and have been offering farm tours since 2008. “Hawaiian agriculture by definition is scarce,” says fifth-generation farmer Will Lydgate. “We shouldn’t try to compete in commodity crops, but we can grow the best chocolate in the world.”

On three-hour farm tours , guests get to taste lots of chocolate, plus see the cacao plants and learn about the fermentation process. Lydgate sends their fermented cacao beans to Manoa Chocolate on Oahu to make chocolate bars. “Working with Manoa let us focus on farming and farm tours,” Lydgate explains. “While we are discussing building our own factory on Kauai, that wouldn’t have made good business sense until recently. Dylan Butterbaugh at Manoa Chocolate is my favorite chocolate maker in the world. It would have been silly not to work with him.” Cacao is harvested every few weeks, and volunteers are welcome to help with harvest.

You can buy Lydgate Farms single-origin dark and milk chocolate bars online and they also have a beautiful tasting room in downtown Kapaʻa that just opened last summer offering complimentary chocolate tastings of their chocolate bars and chocolate covered macadamia nuts and coffee beans. The tasting room design is reminiscent of a wine tasting room and Lydgate draws inspiration from the wine industry in the way they approach chocolate. “Our farm is known for fruity and floral flavors, low acidity and bitterness, fine grained tannins, and rich chocolate flavor,” Lydgate says. The farm also grows vanilla and has beehives producing honey, recently launching a new honey bee tour .

Kīlauea Jungle Oasis, HouLau Farm & Princeville Botanical Garden and Garden Island Chocolate

Several other small Kauai cacao farms also offer farm tours and chocolate tastings, so you can have a close look at the sustainable agroforestry and chocolate-making process. For example, Kīlauea Jungle Oasis in Kilauea has 200 cacao trees on their six-acre farm, along with more than 100 other tropical fruit trees, including durian, jackfruit, noni and mangosteen. HouLau Farm Chocolate has a three-acre solar-powered chocolate farm in Moloa’a, and Howard and Sally Ogilvie spent eight years developing their farm before they had mature trees producing ripe cacao pods ready to be made into chocolate. Princeville Botanical Gardens and Garden Island Chocolate offer farm tours as well. It’s rare that every step of the chocolate making process, from harvesting pods to fermentation to roasting, winnowing, grinding and tempering can all be performed at the same location, but these Kauai chocolate farms are making single-origin chocolate at origin. Some of these farms book far in advance four tours, so be sure to plan ahead.

Wild Kauai Chocolate

Lance Hale of Wild Kauai Chocolate makes micro-batch chocolate for Princeville Botanical Gardens and for his own brand in a tiny 300 square-foot studio space with three five-pound chocolate melangers and a makeshift winnower he fondly calls “Crackenstein.” Hale also works with beans from Ecuador, which he says are more consistently fermented and readily available than local beans. Wild Kauai Chocolate makes two-ingredient chocolate using just cacao beans and cane sugar, and focuses on dark chocolate with 70%, 85% and 100% chocolate bars.

Hale was previously a special needs high school teacher in Colorado before his family moved to Kauai in May 2020 and his chocolate workshops are a lot of fun and very educational. Hale cracks jokes the entire time, and guests have a chance to hand temper chocolate on a marble countertop before making their own bars, choosing from more than 40 different inclusions, including local ingredients like coffee beans from Imua Coffee Roasters , chile powder and dried fruit. Guests make two chocolate bars to take home during the 90-minute workshop and I created a matcha, candied ginger and sesame seed bar along with a superfood bar with turmeric, spirulina and rose petals.

Koloa Rum’s Cacao Rum

There are several other places to try Kauai chocolate around the island too. Koloa Rum makes a cacao rum using Lydgate Farms cacao nibs, and the rum-soaked nibs are then sent back to Lydgate to make a limited edition Koloa Rum dark chocolate bar. Holey Grail Donuts uses exclusively Lydgate Farms chocolate for their chocolate donuts, which are glazed and freshly fried to order in coconut oil, with a taro-based dough.

Check the Minibar!

Several Kauai hotels are supporting these homegrown chocolate makers too. 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay includes Lydgate Farms chocolate covered macadamia nuts among other local artisanal snacks in the guest room minibars and Grand Hyatt Kauai sells Wild Kauai Chocolate bars in their gift shop.

Because Hawaiian cacao is in short supply and expensive, not too many chocolate makers make single-origin Hawaiian bars. For a true Hawaiian chocolate experience, you need to come visit. “We are like Napa in the 1980s,” Lydgate says. He hopes that as Hawaiian chocolate becomes more well-known, Kauai will eventually become a must-visit destination for chocolate connoisseurs.