Chocolate. What’s that all about? 

Sure, there’s a block of Bournville in our fridge, but just as – throughout the entire six episodes of Blackadder the Third, where I inhabited the “brown grit with hot water” coffee-shop world of cakes and chocolatey sweetmeats – very little chocolate passed Mrs Miggins’s lips, very little has passed mine off-screen, either. I’ve just never really “got” it.

Chocolate is famously thought to be an aphrodisiac (Casanova called it “the elixir of love”, and he knew a thing or two about romance by all accounts), but I recently discovered that it’s said to be good for you in lots of other ways, too: for the heart, the mind, the skin, cholesterol ­levels, and in the depths of winter when we crave chocolate to release endorphins and serotonin. 

So, after a particularly long and particularly dark winter – and with Easter approaching – I decided it was time to untether my inner chocoholic.

Enter St Lucia. Known to islanders as “Helen, of the West Indies”, it literally has my name all over it. But more than that, it was this lovely little Caribbean island that changed my perception of chocolate forever.

The confection’s bittersweet 4,000-year history began in Mexico, where the first cacao plants were found. Soon after the Spanish arrived, they developed a taste for the stuff, and this fabulous new flavour was soon rippling around Belgium, ­Holland, Switzerland, France, Italy and – when Joseph Fry created the first British chocolate bar in 1847 – our little island too.

But nothing compares to the taste of chocolate made right where the cocoa beans are grown, harvested, fermented and roasted. St Lucia sits ­perfectly in that cradle, with its volcanic Pitons, towering testaments to nutrient-dense soils. 

A Garden of Eden under a canopy of lush vegetation, its heat and tropical downpours provide perfect conditions for growing cacao beans, producing some of the finest chocolate in the world.

Odds are, you’ll have tasted it – but after centuries of exporting its cacao around the world, St Lucia has lately started to retain some of its treasure, leading to an explosion of “chocolate tourism” and a host of related ­experiences. If I was going to debut my inner chocoholic properly, I would simply have to go to St Lucia.

It seemed logical to start at the Rabot Hotel – Hotel Chocolat’s luxurious outpost – on St Lucia’s south-west coast, slap bang alongside the Petit Piton. 

There, my husband and I began with the “Tree to Bar Tour”. Coconuts, bananas, mangoes and cacao pods grow from trees that provide shade for each other (“What grows together, goes together,” explained Taj, our guide). 

Hanging in the shape of a rugby ball, coloured green, yellow, red or purple, the hard-husked cacao pods are a wonder to behold – and when the pods are cracked open, nestling in a lychee-flavoured mucilage are the beans. Hand-picked, they are hulled, washed, shelled and then, over 10 days, dried out.

Mortar and pestle in hand, we were soon pounding the chocolatey “nibs” into powder, then grinding them, first into a paste, and then into liquid chocolate, palette-knifed into a silky consistency then poured into a bar shape to be chilled in the fridge. Hot work, soundly rewarded with a cacao daiquiri followed by a cacao spa treatment: a brisk exfoliation with cacao shells followed by a banana-and-chocolate massage.

Time to balance the indulgence with a bit of history. Winding down to the coast, we headed to the Fond Doux Plantation, where authentic methods of cacao production include the chocolate dance, during which dried-out beans are placed into a large metal cauldron  or chaudière where the traditional ­barefoot dance called the Cocoa-rina polishes and preserves the beans.

Naturally, Hotel Chocolat’s lodgings hits the mark when it comes to the sweet stuff – how could it not? Keen to see whether the rest of the island was keeping pace, we decamped to Anse Chastanet – a hedonist’s paradise, overflowing with foliage, floral perfume, Piton peaks, birdsong… and chocolate.

The restaurants at the resort reflect the natural flavours of the island, and there’s even an organic farm, tended by a team of 25 ­gardeners. 

No surprise, then, that the chocolate-related rituals are in a class of their own too: imagine starting your day in the Caribbean with a chocolate sensory tasting experience, moving on to the spa for a rejuvenating chocolate facial (when I mentioned that the smell of the chocolate was making my mouth water, my therapist produced a platter of ­fondants) and ending with dinner, topped off with a chocolate and Baileys mousse.

St Lucia’s hotels were, clearly, taking this cacao business very seriously, and my newfound chocolate lust was thriving. 

Just to make sure, we moved on to Jade Mountain, set high on the hills overlooking St Lucia's Pitons World Heritage site – one of the most exotic hotels in the world, home to more than 2,000 cocoa trees and... Peter Gabriel. Not the rock star, the self-trained master chocolatier, who set up a Willy Wonka-esque chocolate laboratory in what was once architect Nick Troubetzkoy’s office, and now oversees chocolate production on-site at the Emerald Farm. Guests can immerse themselves in chocolatey goodness here via a variety of experiences, including another Tree to Bar tour, where they learn about fermentation and drying, as well as wine-and-chocolate tastings, truffle-making masterclasses and visits to the Chocolate Factory – all part of the chocolate empire masterminded by Peter himself.

“Don’t count the ­calories,” he told us, handing round enormous exquisite Easter eggs. So I didn’t.  

Essentials

Helen Atkinson Wood was a guest of Hotel Chocolat’s Rabot Hotel, which has doubles from £492 per night, including breakfast, welcome cocktail, in-room hot-chocolate maker, daily treats, beach shuttles, access to the Rabot Estate trails and the tree-to-bar tour at Project Chocolat (001 758 459 7966); Anse Chastanet Resort, which has doubles from £388 per night (001 800 223 1108); and Jade Mountain Resort, which has suites from £1,109 per night, both of which include resort services such as beach chairs, beach towels, a variety of non-motorized watersports, complimentary daily guided estate walks and other resort activities such as Chocolate Sensory Tastings and Creole History Class (001 800 223 1108), as well as the St Lucia Tourism Authority. 

British Airways flies daily from London to St Lucia from £524 return.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbHLnp6rmaCde6S7ja6iaKyilsOmuI6dnKysmaOutbXOp6pom5GntqOuxJqlaKuRnru1ecuumqKZX6y1unnSrWSlrZOerm610maroZ1dqrm1tcyaq55llJrAtbXNmquip55is7C%2BjJyfqJufoa61sYylpq%2BdXw%3D%3D