After almost 30 years living, working and raising a family in the San Francisco Bay Area, Rose and I decided it was time for a change. It was then 2017 and all of our three children were done with school, working and living on their own. With Rose no longer working, I decided it was time to retire as well. We sold our home of 20 years and downsized to a small condo. Travel and explore was what we wanted to do.

While on a road trip through Luzon in 2019, Rose and I found ourselves doing a cacao farm tour in Baler, Aurora on Valentines Day. It was Rose’s first time to see a cacao fruit, but for me cacao was part of my childhood growing up in Liliw, Laguna. In fact I was caught stealing a cacao fruit in our neighborhood and I spent a few hours in jail for it. I guess, early on, I was already mesmerized by this beautiful fruit.

Upon our return to Liliw, we met Ka Ino Sulibit, a local land owner and farmer who had ten thousand trees and half of the trees were already bearing fruit. With a little research I found out that there is a big demand for cacao, that there’s the craft chocolate movement under way around the world for about 10 to 15 years now, and that dark chocolate is good for your health. We knew right away that there was something for us here, a new door opening up for us.

Back in the states, I started buying books, watching YouTube videos, buying cocoa beans and chocolate making equipment. Then I came across Dr. Nat Bletter who runs a craft chocolate company, Madre Chocolate, in Honolulu, Hawaii. In June 2019 Rose and I spent a week with him, learning about cacao farming, fermentation, drying, sorting, roasting, cracking and winnowing, grinding, conching, tempering, and finally molding into chocolate bars … basically the entire tree-to-bar process.

By August 2019, we were back in Liliw doing our first fermentation and drying trials on cacao beans grown from Ka Ino’s farm. Our second batch was good enough to make into 70% dark chocolate bars to share with friends and relatives and anyone game enough to try it. We even shared it with our Hawaii mentor Dr. Nat Bletter and local chocolate maker Pam Lim Cinco of Risa Chocolate. We received very encouraging feedback.

Banahaw Mountain Cacao came about as a result of pure curiosity in trying out something totally new that we hope may benefit many people in different ways. 

We hope you can follow and join us in this journey.