Spirit of Aloha | Features | September/October 2007

The Rarest Chocolate in the World
Surprise: It’s made in Hawai‘i
By Rita Ariyoshi

Oh, woe to sensitive sybarites.

First we realized our fur coats once had mothers, then the drop-dead glamour of cigarettes went up in smoke; next we found our magnificent chrome-encrusted cars were melting the Arctic ice cap and drowning polar bears, then a girl’s best friend became blood diamonds, and now, chocolate—delicious, delicious chocolate—is, alas, blood chocolate.

I thought I would have fun writing a wonderfully self-indulgent story about my favorite food. I eagerly anticipated the research, the tasting, savoring, comparing. I would make informed pronouncements on the best chocolate can­dy in the world, the finest chocolate mousse in Hawai‘i, the richest chocolate cake I could bake. I would be loved for my labors since Americans spend $13 billion a year on chocolate, averaging 10 pounds of chocolate per person. This might sound ponderous and impressive, but, even in this category, America today is lagging. The British enjoy more than 16 pounds and the Swiss eat an awesome 22 pounds a year for every man, woman and child. In contrast, the Chinese eat only one bar of chocolate for every thousand consumed by the British.

To my horror, I discovered that much of the world’s cacao crop, from which chocolate is derived, is grown with child slave labor. These are not children work­ing the family farm after school. These are children being kidnapped in one nation and enslaved in another so we can munch truffles. It is estimated that the Ivory Coast, which produces 43 percent of the world’s cacao crop, uses 15,000 juvenile slaves. Choc­olate guilt and chocolate sin are obviously more than mere jokes with a wink and a pat to the waistline.

There are upwards of 6 million cacao farmers worldwide. Seventy percent of the world’s cocoa beans come from West Africa. The remaining crops are grown in Asia, South America and the Caribbean. All cacao countries are within 20 degrees north and south of the equator, and 75 percent are within 6 degrees of the equator.

The one exception is Hawai‘i, and here’s where the bitter story of chocolate gets a little sweeter. Michael J. Conway, a plantation manager for Dole Food Co. Hawai‘i, started dabbling in cacao 20 years ago. This is what he tells me: “Dole planted 20 acres in Waialua as part of a diversified agriculture plan to replace sugar. We had 12,000 acres we didn’t know what to do with. We put in 175 acres of coffee and some fruit orchards. Some worked, some didn’t. Three years ago, when the astounding de­mand for dark chocolate started to take off, we took another look at those cacao trees. I couldn’t even find them at first. We harvested some pods, selected a chocolate processor out of the phone book and sent our dried beans off for an evaluation and flavor profile. By luck, we picked one of the finest chocolate makers, E. Guittard in the Bay Area. A week-and-a-half later, Gary Guittard and his vice president showed up in Hawai‘i. ‘We’re fascinated,’ he said. They spent a week with us. We found that we are growing a world-class choc­o­late with very interesting features.”

My chocolate research began in earnest when Conway offered me a piece of Waialua Chocolate. “Let it touch the roof of your mouth,” he urged.

Slowly the slice melted, releasing that rich, familiar, al­most peppery bite of the best dark chocolate, but—ahhh—this chocolate didn’t quit. It released subtle notes of black cherry and raspberry, which were naturally embedded in the flavor. This was a truffle right from the tree. There was ab­solutely no waxy taste.

Conway sat back smugly, looking out on the red dirt of O‘ahu’s fertile central plain. “That is the rarest chocolate in the world,” he said. Chocolatiers are lining up at Dole’s door, begging for the product. “It’s spooky, in a way,” said Conway.

“I envision planting 150 to 200 acres in the next five years. I’ve been to the best cacao plantations in the world collecting seeds. They’re growing in our nursery now. We also want to make land available for small growers. We’re working on plans for this. We won’t have a harvest for four years after planting. A big advantage we have is, this crop is new to Hawai‘i so we don’t have the pests and diseases that come with any crop. So we can be pesticide free. Also, cacao is a tremendous vivifier of soil. In most areas it grows in the understory of the rain forest. We’re growing in full sun. This has taken everyone by surprise.”

Everyone, that is, but Bob and Pam Cooper. In 1997, they bought a small farm at Keauhou Mauka on the Kona Coast of the Big Island. “It was one of those ‘what are we going to do with the rest of our lives’ moments,” says Pam. Neither one were farmers, but they came from farm families. She adds, “There were some cacao trees on the property. We ignored them, but I could almost hear them calling to me, ‘We’re here. We’re here.’”

The trees won. The Coopers not only tended the cacao trees, they went back to school, studied chocolate technology, bought processing equipment, and now have one of the few farms in the world that both grows the cacao and makes the chocolate. “We make about 12,000 to 15,000 pounds of chocolate a year. We work with about 60 other growers. We’ll buy everything from a Ziploc bag of beans to hundreds of pounds. We never refuse a grower. I think this is Hawai‘i’s next major industry.”

The spike in demand for dark chocolate percolated with the discovery of its health benefits. In general, the darker the chocolate, the healthier it is. Milk chocolate contains some cholesterol-raising fat, but the cocoa butter in dark chocolate is vegetable fat, so it has no cholesterol. A Dutch study reported that dark chocolate contains flavonoids, compounds found to have protective qualities against cancer and heart disease. A U.S. Department of Agriculture study at Tufts University measured the antioxidant power of foods and found that cocoa powder beat green tea and blueberries. It also has small amounts of cannaboids, such as in marijuana. However, you’d have to eat about 27 pounds to have a noticeable jolt. The stimulants in dark chocolate are theobromine, phenylethylamine and caffeine. Theobromine enlarges blood vessels and is used to treat high blood pressure. Three ounces of brew- ­ed tea contains the same amount of caffeine as an ounce of semisweet dark chocolate. A one-and-a-half-ounce bar of dark choc­olate contains approximately 210 calories, 4 percent to 6 percent of our daily iron re­quirement, 2 grams of fiber and 14 to 17 grams of fat, only 4 of which are the cholesterol-raising kind. As a reference, a healthy fat intake is between 50 and 65 grams per day. Additionally, cocoa butter is used in cosmetics and ointments and to coat pills. The Mandara Spa at the Hilton Hawaiian Village even has a chocolate body wrap. Chocolate intake has been associated with the release of serotonin in the brain, awarding a feeling of happiness and well-being akin to being in love. Debra Wa­ter­house, author of the 1995 book, Why Women Need Chocolate, found in her surveys that 50 percent of women would choose eating chocolate over making love. “Chocolate,” she concluded, “is the Prozac of plants.” Chocolate, however, doesn’t make you clumsy or drowsy. You can still operate heavy machinery.

The chocolate craze burst upon the world about 3,000 years ago when the Olmec Indians began cultivating the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, south of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. The word cacao is from their ancient language. Beginning about 1,500 B.C., the Mayans took up cacao cultivation. They considered the tree a gift from the gods, and the only tree worth naming. They ground the beans, mixed them with water, chili peppers and cornmeal, and concocted a spicy, invigorating drink. To make it good enough for their peevish gods, they added the blood of enemies and virgins. Chocolate was served during religious ceremonies, a precur- sor of the coffee-and-doughnut fellowship after Protestant Sunday worship.

By the 14th century, the Aztecs dominated Meso­america and took up cocoa drinking. They liked it so much, cacao beans became a form of Aztec money. The word “chocolate” comes from the Aztec Nahuatl language and means “bitter” and “water.” Reportedly, Mon­te­zuma’s court drank about 2,000 cups of chocolate per day, Montezuma himself 50 of them, from golden goblets that were immediately tossed into the lake after one use. It was the beginning not only of the hot-chocolate industry, but the disposable-cup culture.

On his fourth and last voyage to the Americas, Christopher Columbus be­came the first European to come in contact with cacao when his crew encountered a large canoe off the coast of Honduras. They, of course, seized it and found it to be filled with goods for trade, including cacao beans. Later, Columbus’s son, Ferdinand, recorded the event: “They [the Native Americans] seemed to hold these almonds [as he called the cacao beans] at a great price; for when they were brought onboard ship together with their goods, I ob­served that when any of these almonds fell, they all stooped to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen.”

Columbus and son found the drink bitter and repellant. It took Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes to recognize its military and economic potential. He recorded in 1519 that “a cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole day without food.” When he failed to find El Dorado, American gold, Cortes turned to cacao and discovered that money grew on trees.

The Spanish soon established cacao plantations in the Caribbean, Mexico, Ecuador, Venezuela and Peru. Brazilian writer Jorge Amado reported that early planters fell victim to “cacao fever.” He wrote: “He does not see the forest … chocked with dense creepers and century-old trees, inhabited by wild animals and apparitions. He sees fields planted with cacao trees … He sees plantations pushing the forest back and stretching as far as the horizon.” He was the original environmental nightmare.

In 1544, some Dominican friars, ac­companied by a delegation of Mayan nobles, presented jars of cocoa to Prince Philip of Spain. The Spanish added sugar and vanilla and kept chocolate to themselves for a century, not sharing it with the rest of Europe.

The first chocolate house, called The Coffee Mill and Tobacco Roll, opened in London in 1657. Chocolate emporiums spread (and so did the people) as they began eating solid chocolate in the form of rolls and cakes. The prolific English writer Samuel Pepys penned in his diary entry of April 24, 1661: “Waked in the morning with my head in a sad taking through last night’s drink, which I am very sorry for; so rose and went with Mr. Creede to drink our morning draught, which he did give me in jocolatte to settle my stomach.” He later recorded a visit to a coffee house “to drink jocolatte,” and pronounced it “very good.”

Chocolate was introduced to the United States in 1765, when Irish choc­olate-maker John Hanan imported co­coa beans from the West Indies. He teamed up with American Dr. James Baker and built America’s first chocolate mill, making the now famous Baker’s Chocolate.

Joseph Fry & Son made the first bar of chocolate candy in 1847 and, with the Cadbury brothers, introduced bonbons to the world at an exhibition at Bir­ming­ham, England. It was Richard Cadbury who created the first heart-shaped candy box for Valen­tine’s Day in 1861. Thirty-two years later, Mil­ton S. Hershey built a chocolate factory in the Pennsyl­vania hill country and became the “Henry Ford of the chocolate world.” The first known published recipe for chocolate brownies came from the 1897 Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog.

Queen Victoria sent 5,000 pounds of chocolate candy to her soldiers for Christ­mas, beginning a tradition of choc­olate rations for the military. Amer­ican soldiers popularized chocolate bars during World War I by sharing their rations with civilians. In 1913, Jules Sechaud, a Swiss confectioner, in­tro­duced a ma­chine process for manufacturing filled chocolates. By 1930, there were nearly 40,000 different kinds of chocolate.

Hawai‘i claims some excellent chocolates by chocolatiers not yet using locally grown cacao. Famed chef Philippe Pado­vani has been making his own candies for years and now has two shops, one in the Hyatt Regency Waikïkï, the other on Bishop Street in downtown Honolulu. While his chocolate is not from local trees, his 40 delectable fillings include pineapple ganache, liliko‘i, apple banana caramel, kiawe honey and Kona peaberry coffee. Even Big Island Candies, with its fa­mous chocolate-dipped shortbread cookies, uses imported cacao. The Kailua Candy Co. in Kailua-Kona, which is rated among the top chocolatiers in the country and makes its can­dy by hand while you watch, is best known for its chocolate honu, or “turtles,” clusters of maca­damia nuts embedded in caramel and chocolate. Again, it does not use locally grown cacao, al­though it is one of more than 30 retailers selling can­dy from Bob and Pam Cooper’s Original Hawaiian Choc­olate Factory.

The only problem with Hawaiian-grown chocolate is supply. There’s simply not enough to go around—yet.

To taste Dole’s intriguing chocolate, you have to drive out to the Dole Pineapple Visitor Center, fly over to Läna‘i and pick it up in the gift shop of the Four Seasons Mänele Bay Resort, or, much easier, dine at Alan Wong’s Restaurant in Honolulu and finish with his Chocolate Sampler, which in­cludes chocolate ice cream, a slice of rich chocolate cake, a Wong Way candy bar with nougat, and a warm, runny pudding with cream, all concocted from Waia­lua Chocolate. Wong’s pastry chef, Michelle Karr, says, “Waialua Choco­late is more fruity, aromatic. It has more of a nose. If you think of wine, this is a fine Pinot Noir.” Wong agrees. “Waialua is a great choc­olate. I grew up in Wahiawä. We’d go down Waialua side every weekend to the beach and the fields. It was our playground. I have always supported local ethical agriculture.”

I finished my research the way I had dreamed of starting it, sitting and sipping Wong’s Adult Milkshake, a smooth, cool blend of ice cream, Irish whiskey and one of the world’s great chocolates, pono-grown right here in Hawai‘i, with aloha for the land and those who work on it.

RITA ARIYOSHI, a frequent contributor to SPIRIT OF ALOHA, is a multiple winner of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism award and a recipient of the Pushcart Prize for literature.

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