Following the previous work of Qiu and Shu (SIAM J Sci Comput 31: 584–607, 2008), we investigate the performance of Hermite weighted essentially non-oscillatory (HWENO) scheme for nonconvex conservation laws. Similar to many other high order methods, we show that the finite volume HWENO scheme performs poorly for some nonconvex conservation laws. We modify the scheme around the nonconvex regions, based on a first order monotone scheme and a second entropic projection, to ensure entropic convergence. Extensive numerical tests are performed. Compare with the earlier work of Qiu and Shu which focuses on 1D scalar problems, we apply the modified schemes (both WENO and HWENO) to one-dimensional Euler system with nonconvex equation of state and two-dimensional problems.