Garden Island Chocolate Tour & Tasting

Specialties

Tasting

To taste: be it chocolate, wine, tea, coffee or cheese, you need to engage all five senses.

1. Use your eyes

Look at the piece of chocolate you are about to taste, evaluating its texture before you put it in your mouth. The surface should be smooth and shiny, indicating that the cocoa butter is properly crystallized (tempered). Do not be swayed by the color. There are few rules about what color is best, and the shade of chocolate color is influenced by many factors such as bean type and roasting time as well as milk content.

2. Touch it

Is it soft or hard? Sticky, grainy, sandy or velvety? Crisp or crunchy? Getting to know the feel of a chocolate will help you recognize it again in the future. It will also help you to identify quality. The smoother the texture, the more unctuous it will be in the mouth. The finer the chocolates particles, the greater the aromas you will find in it.

3. Listen to it

Even your ability to hear affects taste and loss of hearing can give the impr

History

Established in 2007.

Garden Island Chocolate is the premier gourmet Hawaiian Chocolate bar. Our locally grown cacao infused with the flavors of Kaua’i and the Big Island of Hawaii, produces some of the finest chocolate in the world. Mahalo for helping us to sustain and support local agriculture, and in turn a healthy and happy community.

I founded this small company with the vision of making the world’s best chocolate. Garden Island Chocolate’s goals are to bring to the visitors and local residents of Kauai a chocolate bar made from locally grown cacao. This will greatly stimulate the local economy by providing jobs and a viable and sustainable agricultural crop.

Meet the Business Owner

Koa K.

Business Owner

As an avid farmer and father I had a dream of sustainability and always looked to the land and sea to support my wife and children. We plant organic gardens to feed our bodies and enrich our souls. Clean healthy organic food, pure untreated water, and pristine ocean air in our opinion is true wealth. I spear fish along the reefs and forage for fruit in the jungle whenever possible. Living off the land is an education unparalleled by any university.

I spent 9 years in various colleges, traveling the world, receiving my undergraduate degree with honors from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Masters in Polynesian/​South East Asian Art History from the University of Hawaii. On my extensive travels I delighted in the different regional foods and always visited the local markets. My friends called me a picky eater, I like to think of myself as a gourmet foodie.

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