Steelgrass Chocolate Farm Tour - Kauai, Hawaii
Steelgrass Chocolate Farm Tour
Hawaii is the only state where the chocolate tree grows, and the only place on Kauai where you can experience a live chocolate tree orchard is at Steelgrass Farm, our family’s eight-acre tropical garden specializing in vanilla, bamboo, and theobroma cacao, the chocolate tree. You’re invited to enjoy the Steelgrass Chocolate Farm Tour, a guided exploration of everything there is to know about how to grow and harvest chocolate fruit, and turn that fruit into your own home-made chocolate. Bring yourself, your friends and family. Kids 12 and under are free, and with so much to see, smell and taste, the Farm’s wide-open spaces make this a wonderful event for even small children.
Entitled Chocolate From Branch to Bar, the two-hour tour begins in the Steelgrass chocolate orchard, where your guide will teach you about the history and cultivation of this fascinating plant. You’ll see the trees up close and personal at all stages of growth, and since they bear fruit year-round, your guide will open a ripe chocolate fruit and pass around the delicious seeds for tasting.
You will then get a look at the equipment used in processing raw cacao into cacao nibs and finished chocolate, and your guide will explain the many steps involved, from fermentation and drying to complex technical processes with names like mélange, conche and tempering. You’ll have an opportunity to taste the cacao beans at each stage of their journey toward becoming chocolate.
Best of all, the tour concludes with a chocolate tasting, where you can sample some of the world’s rarest and most costly single-estate dark chocolate bars, from makers such as Scharffen Berger, Guittard and Dagoba (USA), Valrhona (France), and Amedei (Italy).
Chocolate From Branch to Bar is offered twice a week, Monday and Wednesday beginning at 9AM. Advance reservations are required. .