All activities / Culinary / Cooking / Belmont Estate
Culinary / Cooking in Belmont Estate
A 17th-century plantation in St. Patrick parish in the north of Grenada, now a working organic cocoa estate and one of the island's best-known farm-to-table attractions. Set in the cocoa belt near the village of Hermitage, it runs tree-to-bar chocolate tours and a Creole restaurant, at the centre of the Spice Isle's fine-flavour cocoa country.
Why here
Grenada is the Spice Isle, and its cocoa is world-class fine-flavour Trinitario, so the north of the island is one of the best places anywhere to follow chocolate from the tree to the bar. Belmont Estate, a working 17th-century plantation, lets you walk the organic cocoa groves, turn the drying beans with your feet as workers have for generations, watch the fermentary and drying houses, sip cocoa tea and taste chocolate made on site, then sit down to a Creole lunch served from a coal-pot buffet warmed by live charcoal. A few miles away in Hermitage, the Grenada Chocolate Company runs the operation that pioneered the whole idea, the first tree-to-bar chocolate made at source, founded by the late Mott Green to keep the value of the crop in the hands of local farmers. Between the two you get the full story of Grenadian cocoa, the farming, the fermentation, the craft of making a bar and the flavours of the island's kitchen, in the parish where it all happens. May brings the Grenada Chocolate Festival, when the estates open up further with tastings and hands-on sessions.
Best months
The estates run tours and lunch year round, with the driest, easiest travelling months from January to May. Cocoa is harvested in two main flushes, broadly around October to February and again in the spring, so those months are the liveliest for seeing beans fermented and dried. The Grenada Chocolate Festival lands in May and is the single best week for chocolate-focused workshops and estate events. Belmont's flagship tree-to-bar experience is a four-hour immersion including lunch; shorter cocoa and farm tours run through the day.
Getting there & around
Belmont Estate is in St. Patrick parish in the north of the island, about an hour to an hour and a quarter's drive from St. George's, usually reached by guide, taxi or hire car and easily paired with the River Antoine distillery and the Grenville nutmeg station. Belmont's classic tour runs under an hour, the farm tour a couple of hours, and the full tree-to-bar chocolate tour about four hours with lunch, which is worth booking ahead. The Grenada Chocolate Company factory in Hermitage keeps shorter, less formal visiting hours, so check before turning up. The Creole restaurant at Belmont serves a set multi-course lunch.
Skill levels: beginner
Schools & guides (2)
Belmont Estate
OutfitterBelmont Estate is a 17th-century plantation in St. Patrick parish, now a certified-organic cocoa farm and Grenada's flagship farm-to-table attraction. Guests walk the cocoa fermentary and drying houses, help turn the beans, sip cocoa tea and taste chocolate made on site, then eat a Creole lunch from a live coal-pot buffet in its open-air restaurant. Tours range from a classic 45-minute visit to a four-hour tree-to-bar chocolate experience with lunch, alongside farm and goat-dairy tours.
Grenada Chocolate Company
OutfitterThe Grenada Chocolate Company was founded in 1999 by the late Mott Green in the village of Hermitage, St. Patrick, and pioneered tree-to-bar chocolate, making bars at source from organic Trinitario beans grown on local farms rather than shipping the crop abroad. Built around a farmer cooperative and known for its solar-powered, small-scale factory, it turned Grenada into a reference point for craft chocolate. Visitors can tour the operation and taste the bars where they are made.