Fodor's Expert Review Musée du Café/Café Chaulet

From the riverfront Musée du Café/Café Chaulet, dedicated to the art of coffee making, the tantalizing aroma of freshly ground beans reaches out to the highway. Plaques and photos illustrate the island's coffee history. You will learn that coffee was once Guadeloupe's principal crop and that Chaulets have been planters and exporters since 1900. The shop sells excellent arabica coffee, rum punches, Schrubb (an orange liqueur), hot sauces, sachets of spices, bay-rum lotion, marmalades, and jewelry made from natural materials. Cocoa beans are also grown here. The "resident" chocolate maker, a young Frenchwoman, also crafts bonbons and festive holiday candies with lots of dark chocolate and tropical fruit from the island. You will even see the coffee cars—emblazoned Volkswagen Beetles. The Chaulet family respects traditional procedures while bowing to modernity. Their latest product is coffee capsules.