KAPA’A, KAUAI — In a quiet clearing on the luxurious, tropical fruit and chocolate plantation of Lydgate Farms, we take our first chunk of tangy, mucilaginous cacao fruit. The creamy white pulp may have develop into an epic bitter sweet taste had it not been overshadowed two millennia in the past by its seed: the supply of wealthy, decadent chocolate.
Right here, on this 46-acre farm in japanese Kauai, between Sleeping Large and Mount Wai’ale’ale, the fifth era of the Lydgate household grows the cacao and turns it into award-winning, single-estate chocolate bars. The Paris-based Cocoa of Excellence Programme, which acknowledges excellence in cacao farming and premium chocolate, has twice named Lydgate Farms to its checklist of fifty greatest goodies, first in 2017 and once more in 2021. Maui Ku’ia Property, a cacao farm nestled within the mountains of West Maui, additionally made the checklist in 2021.
Such status normally goes to the Valrhonas of the world. However, Hawaii is becoming a member of their leagues. It's the solely state the place cacao grows fruitfully — and the business is rising. Along with Maui Ku’ia Property, there are cacao farms on the Huge Island, together with Lavaloha and Honoka’a Chocolate Co., each in Hilo.
Right here in Kauai, as you drive by means of the winding foothills resulting in Lydgate Farms, you understand you’re in for one thing particular. The humid air is heavy with aromas of soursop, longan, apple bananas and greater than two dozen different unique fruits that thrive right here. The farm is residence to native Hawaiian taro and hibiscus, betelnut palms and extra tropical flowering vegetation, together with the prized vanilla orchid, than we will rely.
For a meals and journey author who has been to Kauai thrice, seeing chocolate timber and tasting what's constructed from them — sure, dreamy milk and darkish chocolate bars but in addition tea, popsicles and brewing chocolate — was a uncommon lesson in tropical terroir. Regardless of the value tag of $345 for 3 folks, the tour and tasting was a no brainer for my household. We’d snorkel Napali subsequent time.
An actual, working chocolate farm just isn't glamorous. We arrive at reception, a cottage porch that doubles as Lydgate’s retail store, and douse ourselves in bug spray earlier than becoming a member of the group. Our information, Melanie, has a cheerful presence and a chemist’s information of chocolate, from the department to the bar. She has us collect round a cacao tree, a wide-branching evergreen not more than 30 ft tall, and explains its origins within the Amazon and why Kauai’s tropical local weather is an ideal match.
The pods on this specific theobroma cacao range in measurement and shade, from yellow to maroon, and sprout from the branches and even the trunk, the place they dangle like crimson chiles. As a result of pods don't ripen on the similar time, harvesting is fixed — each two weeks — to make sure every valuable, one-pounder is plucked at its peak. Lydgate doesn’t have a facility to course of the pods from its 3,000 timber, so they're despatched to Manoa Chocolate on Oahu, the place they're roasted and floor and returned to Lydgate.
The fermentation and drying — the most important steps in growing the chemical compounds that yield chocolate’s fruity, floral, spice-laden flavors — occur right here. Nothing is wasted, both. The employees turns the sweet-sour pulp into refreshing popsicles, excellent to eat after mountaineering throughout the farm, and the shells from the roasted cacao beans are become tea and brewing chocolate.
From there, we search shelter beneath the shade of a vanilla bean tree, its vines blooming with lengthy inexperienced tendrils. Vanilla is definitely an orchid, Melanie explains, and as vegetation, they don’t even begin producing pods till they're three years previous. Once they do bloom, they keep open for a really brief time — simply 10 to 12 hours — and should be pollinated by hand.
“It’s very labor intensive,” she says. “To develop, course of, pollinate and ferment vanilla takes a 12 months and a half.”
A bottle of imitation vanilla extract again house is devoid of this prized nectar. Moderately, we study, it's probably constructed from petroleum and lignin, a byproduct within the paper-making course of. “Consider the odor of an previous library e book,” Melanie says.
We ponder this whereas strolling deeper into the plantation, passing black bamboo and slender, crimson sealing-wax palms, and arrive in a clearing with benches and plastic chairs. We take our seats as Melanie passes out samples of just-harvested fruit from the farm. We style starfruit, fleshy longan and inga, generally known as ice cream bean for its smooth cloud of moist, creamy fruit.
All of a sudden, one other information, Jake, produces a machete. As we nibble on the fiber-less, vivid orange, impossibly candy flesh of a Hayden mango, he begins hacking right into a ripe cacao pod, gaining depth and cracking it open to disclose rows of white pulp-enrobed seeds that appear to be corn on the cob. Curious, I cracked open a seed with my tooth. The within is bitter, and vivid purple.
The one factor that might prime this wonderment could be consuming a ridiculous quantity of chocolate. And that’s precisely what occurs subsequent. Coincidentally, the day earlier than our tour, we stopped by the farm for a free chocolate tasting. However the expertise that comes with the tour is twice as lengthy — that means double the chocolate buzz — and consists of side-by-side comparisons to bigger, premium chocolate producers. It’s an eye-opening training.
We left paradise with greater than $100 in high-quality chocolate, together with a exceptional, 75 p.c darkish chocolate bar laced with Koloa Hawaiian Rum, and it’s already gone. However the reminiscence of tasting that vivid, candy-like pulp amid an enclave of chocolate timber — that is still.
If You Go
Lydgate Farms gives weekday excursions, rain or shine, at 5730 Olohena Highway, Kapa’a. Excursions are three hours lengthy and value $95 for youngsters 7 to 12 and $125 for adults, with tastings of honey, tropical fruits and chocolate included. The farm’s chocolate store is open from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekdays and gives free chocolate samples, too. For extra data, and to e book a tour, go to https://lydgatefarms.com.