CHOCOLATE TOUR
From blossom to bar
Being a working and privately owned farm, reservations are required for your private tour to ensure the best time ever!
Chocolate & Coffee Tour
An Adventure
Being a working and privately owned farm, reservations are required for your private tour to ensure the best time ever!
Maui Chocolate and Coffee Tours: Pick Yours
Chocolate: From blossom to bar
Come explore our “blossom to bar and beyond adventure” at Kupa’a Organic Farm in Kula! This chocolate adventure will have you scamper through a small young orchard with baby cacao (ca – cow) to mature trees that will be blooming to fruiting with mother nature’s approval. You’ll learn about all the other exquisite plants and trees throughout the gardens and orchards. As all agricultural farms, we also haven’t figured out “nature on demand” yet!
Group size is limited to 12, but we can accommodate up to 14 guests upon request. Smaller groups keep the experience more intimate since there is a hands-on chocolate making demonstration as part of the adventure. Then we explore the many flavors of chocolates from around the world coming from different latitudes with different attitudes (thank you Jimmy Buffet!). The tasting will include at least 2 chocolates from Hawaii, and after your tour, you will fully understand how rare chocolates from Hawaii are, and especially from Maui…more chocolate from Maui is waiting on the horizon!
From the gardens and cacao orchard you’ll stroll up the drive to take in the most spectacular breathtaking bi-coastal views that Maui has to offer. Once you reach the top of the property, that’s where the cacao and chocolate magic really kicks in on the Maui Chocolate Blossom to Bar Tour. You will learn the entire process from harvesting, fermenting, drying and roasting. Then, the hands-on group participation party begins! Of course, this portion is for those who want play. You will experience the raw cacao fruit (nature permitting), roasted beans, ground beans to experience the texture change once the cocoa butter is released, and finally the chocolate drink mix before it is steeped.
Our guides explain artisan chocolate making and how it is remotely or not so related to industrial chocolate making. The ancient chocolate drink that we prepare was made for spiritual rituals and celebrations of the Mayans and Aztecs. Once chocolate was discovered and introduced to Europe by Cortez, it was only consumed by the elite. Today, we prepare it for you, our “ali’i”, Hawaiian for royalty. Okole Maluna (bottom’s up)!
WAIT….there is still more fun to come! Everybody is seated family style to taste 6 or 7 different chocolates from around the world, conducted much like a wine tasting without having to spit! You will sample 2-3 Hawaiian chocolates with the full explanation as to why Hawaiian chocolates are so scarce. Each chocolate is from a different latitude, except the Hawaiian chocolate, and sometimes the Hawaiian samples will come from farms that are only miles apart with wildly different flavors. You will experience the chocolate “talking to you”!
Coffee and Chocolate Adventure
Our tour offers an enchanted walk through organic shade grown coffee orchards on the slopes of Haleakala. Our farm features 8 different varieties of coffee each with a distinct flavor. We grow coffee under a canopy of that includes native trees that help to create a forest like ecology similar to coffee in its native Ethiopia. The terroir of our coffees reflect the varietals we grow as well as the ecology and cultural practices that we use. The tour includes tasting and the full gamut of picking and processing techniques that has helped us maintain “specialty coffee” status for the last 11 years.
There are three main species of coffee: Arabica, Robusto and Liberica. Liberica is the least know with only about 2% of the world’s coffee consumption. Arabica is the species grown at the farm and each species has its own varietals. There are 9 varieties of Arabica grown at Kupa’a: red and yellow catuai, red, yellow and orange Bourbon (from the French Bourbon islands), typica, san ramon, mundo novo, and guadalupe. The last one which is planted in the mid section of the farm, maybe replaced by cacao since more space is needed to meet demand.
We had the opportunity to experience an upcountry outing to learn about a favorite food item – Chocolate! Ann showed us cacao from beginning to finished product. All you might want to learn & more. The walkabout was beautiful with bi-coastal views of Maui and finished off with tasting a wide variety of chocolates and special chocolate drink mix. Do yourself a favor take a drive upcountry for a wonderful outing! Ann is a wonderful tour leader and more than happy to share what she has learned.
Had a great time on the Chocolate tour with Ann! She’s very knowledgeable about the whole growing and production process and I learned a lot about one of my favorite foods!! The tour lasts about 2 hours, there’s never a dull moment. She ran us through crushing the beans, using a fan to remove the unwanted parts, put them through a grinder to get the butter out, and prepared a delicious chocolate concoction for us to enjoy. And we ended with a tasting of chocolates from different parts of the world—yummy! The location has gorgeous views of the island, which doesn’t hurt either. Definitely worth making this part of your Upcountry day!
I didn’t know how much I didn’t know! Best Chocolate (Cacao!) education
I had never really thought about, where does my chocolate come from? Hershey, PA right?!…. not correct… well how about Belgium or Germany? also way off base. I learned so much, but one of my biggest take away was learning about the 20/20 belt. The global Cacao growing region twenty degrees north or south of the Equator, those are the places where Cacao is grown, and dried, and fermented, and then roasted! (just like coffee) before being shipped to places like Hershey and made into the kisses we all know and love.
There was way too much info to re-cap in this review, but it was a very fun and engaging (not to mention Delicious!) way to learn about Chocolate/Cacao and Coffee in one of the most beautiful places on Maui bi-coastal views from an amazing upcountry organic farm wow! what a fun afternoon for everyone in my group.
So cool! Now we know where chocolate comes from!
My five year old daughter and I took the tour together and we were so impressed! First of all the bicoastal views are epic! Our tour guide Ann was super friendly and presented an educational experience in such an intriguing and fun way. We really enjoyed how hands on the tour was. Make sure you have plenty of room on your phone to take photos because there are so many photo ops. We actually got to make a cacao drink straight from the beans and taste it! The chocolate tasting at the end was so delicious and the chocolate tasting wheel was super cool. My favorite was the Madagascar chocolate that was creamy with citrus notes and the coffee was delicious! My daughter was super excited to go to school and tell her classmates that now she knows where chocolate comes from. The farm was magical and charming. At the end of the tour We bought the fresh lilikoi bread and can’t stop thinking about how delicious it was! Definitely i must do on Maui for people of all ages!
Fun and Educational
Ann was an amazing tour guide! She was outstanding and so knowledgeable about both coffee and chocolate. Beautifully set on Kupa’a Farms, it is a great activity for anyone who loves food and a great view. The coffee was so good we ended up bringing a bag home. Highly recommend this tour!