A Festival of Chocolate: The Sweetest Event of the Year
Saturday and Sunday, January 20 & 21, 2024
10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
What better way to kick off the new year than by tasting your way through chocolate confections, decadent desserts, and savory bites at our A Festival of Chocolate.
Experience a weekend filled with all things chocolate that will delight your palate and remind you of the bounty from the tropics. We'll have cacao trees available for purchase for your home garden.
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What you can expect:
- Enjoy chocolate tastings, cooking demos, and chocolate-inspired activities and classes
- Enjoy chocolate pairings, chocolate-themed drink specialty flights and tastings, and a variety of chocolate infused foods all aimed at unlocking flavors
- Visit chocolate and artisanal vendors!
- Shop cacao trees for your home garden all weekend long as well as 'chocolate scented' orchids
- Listen to live music
- Watch your little ones ride the Chocolate Express!
- Enjoy spectacular butterflies at Wings of the Tropics, our exotic butterfly exhibit
- Sit in the shade and watch your little ones run, play and explore at The Children’s Garden
- Cool down in the misty cloud forest and National Orchid Garden in the only tropical rainforest in the continental U.S.
- And so much more!
FUN FACT:
Theobroma cacao is also known as "The Chocolate Fruit"
Did you know that chocolate is made from the fruit of the Theobroma cacao tree? Often described as the "Food of the Gods," cacao is a tropical rainforest understory plant. You can see cacao trees growing in our Rainforest; you may even see some fruit ready for harvesting!