Lydgate Farms Chocolate Tasting Tour: Changing the Way You Feel About Chocolate
Holo Holo Charters is dedicated to sustainability through our work, business practices, daily boat tours, community volunteerism, company goals, and business partnerships. We’re proud to partner with like-minded businesses that put stewardship and environmental ideas into action.
Lydgate Farms Kauaʻi Chocolate
We are thrilled to announce our newest partnership with Lydgate Farms Kauaʻi Chocolate, whose local, eco-conscious, sustainable business practices greatly align with those of our own.
Join us today as we taste our way through the Lydgate Farms Chocolate Tasting Tour, an educational, mouth-watering experience sure to delight all of your senses and have you looking at chocolate in a whole new way. And don’t forget to mention Holo Holo Charters when booking with Lydgate Farms to receive 10% off your epic chocolate tour!
Changing the Way You Feel About Chocolate
What do you taste when you take a bite of good craft chocolate? Do you pick up notes of bourbon, coffee, smoke, or spice? What textures do you notice? Is it gritty, smooth, maybe marshmallow-like?
Lydgate Farm’s award-winning chocolate farm tasting tour is Kauaʻi agriculture at its finest. Their goal is to change how you feel about chocolate, and they are doing just that, one chocolate bar at a time!
Lydgate Farms specializes in craft chocolate. Their small batch of chocolate comes from cacao trees with specifically selected soil, yeast, varieties, etc., producing the unique flavors and notes (fruit-forward, earthy, pungent) you taste in each bar.
Located on 46 acres of gorgeously green, meticulously maintained land on Kauaʻi’s east side, Lydgate’s botanical garden boasts a whopping 3,000 cacao trees, among many other local fruits, vanilla (with 1,000 established vines), and their very own honey bees.
Caring for Cacao From Seed to Chocolate Bar
One thing is evident when you step foot on Lydgate Farms: they care deeply for the land and their cacao, from seed to chocolate bar. In fact, they’ve been caring for the land and local culture since 1865, using regenerative agricultural practices that add life back to the soil.
Lydgate Farms works closely with the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa, sharing how they grow their cacao (grafting practices, biodiversity, soil complexity, etc.), contributing to the future understanding and evolution of sustainable cacao farming.
Growing cacao is a labor of love, and Lydgate Farms loves their cacao. It takes two years for the seedlings to flower and four years for the fruit to be large enough to harvest. Cacao blossoms are pollinated by midge flies, and it takes four midges to pollinate one flower. A single cacao tree has thousands of flowers and is considered mature at 3-4 years old.
Each cacao pod holds 40 cacao seeds, and it takes one cacao pod to make one chocolate bar! The pods range in color from dark maroon to yellow, and the rainbow cacao pods display beautifully blended colors, similar to a Kauaʻi sunset.
Tour, Learn, Taste & Shop
Whether you live on Kauaʻi or are here on vacation, this tour is sure to be one of your favorite Kauaʻi activities (even, and especially, on rainy days). So go ahead and book your tour today, and don’t forget to mention Holo Holo when booking to receive 10% off your tour.
What to expect on your tour:
- A three-hour, extensive, educational, guided chocolate tour that takes you through the entire cacao-farming process.
- A chocolate sampling journey of incredible, small-batch quality that will leave you joyful and stoked on the day (thanks to the naturally occurring organic compounds in dark chocolate called theobromines, which act as mood elevators, boosting serotonin and endorphin levels in the brain).
- Local, award-winning honey (we tasted Lehua Blossom, Christmas Berry, Mac Nut, & Up Country Estate Honey) and tropical fruit samplings.
- A moderate walk (golf cart rides are available if needed) through one of Kauaʻi’s most beautifully cared-for, eco-forward farms.
- Post-tour gift shop with exclusive, craft, one-of-a-kind items.
Don’t have time for a tour? No worries! Stop down to their new brick-and-mortar tasting room in the heart of Kapaʻa Town, where you can buy (and sample) their delicious chocolate, vanilla, honey, and other delectable, locally sourced products.
Sometimes, in life, all it takes is some really good chocolate to change your entire outlook. Trust me when I say this chocolate is it!