If you’re heading south for a holiday, one of Pingtung’s many chocolate farms makes for an enriching day out that satisfies both the mind and the stomach.

Story and photos by DINAH GARDNER

Before Warren Hsu founded Fu Wan Chocolate, one of Taiwan’s most famous bean-to-bar firms, he didn’t even particularly like chocolate.

Growing up, he’d never been exposed to good chocolate — 1980s and 1990s Taiwan had no local cacao industry to speak of. The chocolate of his childhood was limited to processed confectionary or flavored baked goods. “We didn’t really have a chocolate culture,” says Hsu, now in his early 40s. He remembers at most he would eat an occasional 77 乳加 (77 Rujia), a candy bar manufactured by Hunya Foods and made of nougat, peanuts, and a thin coating of chocolate. It’s still sold today in its distinctive bright orange wrapper.

Things have changed for Hsu. Not only has he made a thriving business from chocolate, but it has become a daily treat. He enjoys several squares most days with a cup of tea for breakfast.

Fu Wan, and other local chocolate producers, emerged out of the extraordinary success of an experiment in the early 2000s to plant cacao trees in Pingtung, Taiwan’s southernmost county. This homegrown chocolate industry has also fostered an additional income source through the development of chocolate tourism — opening farms and factories to curious and hungry visitors.

From betelnut to cacao

Cacao, native to South America, was first grown in Taiwan in the 1920s by the Japanese, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. Morinaga & Company, a Japanese confectionary giant still going strong today, had plantations in the border area between Pingtung and Taitung. They were unable to get the industry off the ground because of issues with the climate and technology, among others. The village of Morinaga (known as Senyong in Mandarin) remains a reminder of the century-old experiment.

Cacao was reintroduced to Pingtung in the early 2000s as part of a drive to help farmers transition from growing betelnut, a crop that had been very profitable but was getting a bad name because of its carcinogenic properties. Since cacao trees like to grow in shade, the local government supported farmers in planting this high-value crop under the taller betelnut trees in a type of agriculture called companion farming. Pingtung’s second attempt at cultivating cacao has been rather more successful.

According to the local government, Pingtung’s cacao plantations now cover more than 300 hectares (that’s about the same area as two Songshan Airports). More than 100 farming households are involved in the industry with dozens of homegrown craft chocolate brands. Several of these, including Fu Wan, have gone on to win international awards, catapulting Taiwan onto the global map of quality chocolate producers.

Cacao into craft chocolate

In 2013, Hsu was working as a chef at his family’s restaurant when a local farmer approached him asking for help to sell his freshly harvested cacao pods.

Hsu immediately saw a business opportunity. He was also looking for a way out of his current job. Working as a chef means spending long hours in the kitchen. “I had almost no life,” he remembers. He bought some basic equipment, taught himself how to make chocolate, and started incorporating it into his restaurant’s dishes. A little over a year later, in 2015, he launched Fu Wan Chocolate.

After he attended a chocolate appreciation course in London with the International Institute of Chocolate and Cacao Tasting in 2016, he further refined his production processes. “It really opened our eyes to the chocolate world,” says Hsu, who attended the class with his wife, Audrey Lin, who now runs the company with him. “We tasted almost 100 of the world’s best chocolates in four days.” By early 2026, the company had won more than 300 international awards for its craft products, according to Lin.

Pingtung’s chocolate tourism

Manufacturing craft chocolate is a time-intensive process — it can take a month or more to convert the beans to a bar, explains Hsu, making bean-to-bar chocolate a high-end product with a relatively small market. The development of chocolate tourism helps provide another source of income for farmers and producers and provides a way to directly showcase their confectionary to customers.

A series of complicated processes goes into making craft chocolate, and they must all be set up just right — the right length, the right temperature, and the right humidity — or the taste will be “off,” explains Hsu. The processes include fermentation for up to a week, drying for another one to two weeks, roasting, winnowing (where the husk is removed to extract the chocolate nib), grinding, and conching (churning) so it forms a smooth paste for up to four days, adding ingredients such as sugar and cocoa butter, tempering it to improve the texture, and finally molding it into the shape you want.

While a Pingtung cacao tourist farm is not quite as exciting as Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, it’s still a lot of fun. Lin describes how shocked some children are when they see the cacao pods on the trees at the Fu Wan tour. They had believed chocolate grew on trees as a packaged candy bar, laughs Lin. “That’s a child’s imagination.”

Chocolate starts as a tiny cacao flower — a pale pink or white bloom about the size of a fingernail. These eventually become cacao pods that hang like wrinkled melons all over the tree, even on short stalks emerging from the trunk. They come in a rainbow of colors including yellow, green, orange, red, and purple. Lin shows me her phone’s home screen — I’m expecting a photo of her family (they have two young daughters), but instead it’s a mound of multicolored cacao pods. “People don’t realize how beautiful they are,” she says. The sticky pulp inside is white and fleshy like a mangosteen and tastes nothing like chocolate.

Of the dozens of chocolate experiences to choose from in Pingtung, we’ve reviewed four in the county’s north below. For a complete list, check out the Pingtung Cacao Farm Travel Map on the county government’s website.

Fu Wan Chocolate

Fu Wan offers chocolate tastings and experiences along with a small demonstration farm, small factory, chocolate shop, fine dining restaurant, and hotel on site. It’s a short drive from Donggang Fishery Port, where ferries for Xiaoliuqiu (also known as Little Liuqiu or Lambai) depart. Their small cacao plantation is just for show; most of their beans are purchased from local farmers.

Their hands-on tour (Chinese and English available) starts with cracking your own harvested cacao pod with a mallet (it’s surprisingly easy), followed by a sniff outside the fermenting rooms (usually you can’t enter for hygiene reasons). From here, you head to the drying sheds, where you will have a chance to massage the fermented beans so that they settle evenly on their trays. The dried beans are transferred to giant jars to be aged in a controlled environment in the bean cellar, just like a fine wine. If you ask nicely, you can peek at their vanilla hothouse, which is covered in vines of the sweet-smelling flower. The tour then heads to the factory kitchen above the shop where you can watch workers through a window. This is where the beans are made into chocolate.

Downstairs in the café is where the DIY workshops are held. Here, participants squeeze molten chocolate into molds or make their own designs. It can be a messy business. The shop sells a wide range of Fu Wan chocolate products, including many of their award-winning varieties and a tub of chocolate ice cream best enjoyed in the garden.

A good way to sample the different flavors is to opt for the chocolate tasting set. Make sure you are hungry because nine pieces of quality chocolate are surprisingly filling. The trick to tasting correctly is to go slow and resist biting into the chocolate. Let it melt in your mouth. My favorite was a rose-lychee-mulberry chocolate from their Austronesian collection.

The restaurant was closed for refurbishment during my visit, but I stayed one night at the MUMU Donggang Villa inside the property. Owned by Fu Wan, the hotel is now run by a separate company. The breakfast was a little basic, but the room itself was huge, clean, and comfortable, with a sunken bathtub and large windows.

Fu Wan Chocolate is in Donggang Township, a 90-minute bus or taxi ride from Kaohsiung.

Pingtung Cocoa Chocolate Park

This park is a unique choice for a chocolate experience as it takes place in and around an abandoned Hakka church. About a decade ago, the local government invested money into restoring Jiazuo Holiness Church into a center for promoting the local cacao industry and showcasing dozens of local producers. The advantage here is that you can sample a variety of brands.

Visitors can dine in the chocolate-themed restaurant, take part in a range of chocolate DIY activities, and purchase chocolate-related products — chocolates boxes and bars, chocolate-flavored drinks including tea, and cosmetics and toiletries, the latter using butter and extracts of the cacao fruit husk. There are also guided tours that introduce the history of the church, Pingtung’s cacao industry, and how chocolate is made.

The park is in Wanluan Township, reachable by bus from Pingtung City or by taxi from Zhutian train station.

Zeng Zhi-yuan Chocolate

Another frequent winner of international awards, this bean-to-bar producer does not run hands-on chocolate experiences, so is more suited to the adult connoisseur. Their store in Neipu Township offers chocolate tastings, and the staff are happy to explain how they make chocolate at their factory. It’s an extremely intense and low-yield process — they claim that for 100 kg of cacao pods they make only 1 kg of chocolate.

They have about 20 varieties of flavors and chocolate concentrations (starting at 60% and all the way up to 100%) sold in sleek gift boxes of 24 pieces. Some of the flavors I spotted were burdock, peanut, tea, plum, and cinnamon. They also sell a cacao bean tea, which I found to be a soothing brew, a bit like a weak barley tea. Their 100% dark chocolate is a best seller, they tell me, with older men, who are attracted by its health-giving properties. I preferred the 72% berry-flavored option, which had a nice citrusy kick.

Neipu doesn’t have a train station, so best to get a bus from Pingtung City or a taxi from Zhutian  station.

Choose Chius

Choose Chius is a Pingtung legend. This father-and-son venture was the first in Taiwan to plant cacao and make chocolate from the pods. They began their business in 2004.

They are a small outfit, so if you want to visit their country house and farm you should write a week in advance to reserve the time (there’s a minimum of five people for plantation tours and DIY experiences). Calling in advance is also advised if you want to dine in their home restaurant, enjoy a cup of their homemade hot chocolate or coffee with dessert, or even just buy some of their chocolate products.

The day I went, only the son, Chiu Yu-kuang, 39, was around. While these days they don’t enter their chocolate into international competitions — “It’s too expensive and we don’t win anyway,” says Chiu with a wry laugh — on display and pride of place was their 55% proof cacao distilled liquor. This did win an award, nabbing silver at the Meininger’s International Spirits Award (ISW) April Tasting 2025. “Discover the essence of cacao bliss,” the bottle’s label reads. I accept a small glass, and it burns like a sweet flame in my throat. “You’re not supposed to drink it like a shot,” admonishes Chiu.

Their farm is a bit off the beaten track (another reason to make a reservation). Best to take a taxi from Xishi train station. Despite this, its prominent listing in the guidebook Lonely Planet brings Chiu a lot of foreign customers. He doesn’t speak English, but I can attest that his chocolate wine speaks for itself.