Hawaiian Kona Gourmet Coffee
The Champagne of Coffee is Kona
Premium arabica coffee is a gift from the sun and the earth, born only under perfect environmental conditions in the mountainous regions between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. The best Hawaiian Kona Coffee Belt, a 20-mile long by 2-mile wide band, which rests 700 to 2,500 feet above sea level. Spanning between the slopes of two volcanoes, lush green hills are covered by small, family owned plantations made up of trees that are sometimes more than a hundred years old.
Family owned plantations produce the finest, estate-grown coffee with superior large, dense and flavorful beans. Kona coffee maintains individual subtleties; much better tasting than pooled, generically sold cheaper alternatives. Kona is comparable to the Champagne region in France, which produces the only legitimately named ‘Champagne’ product. And like Champagne, Hawaiian Kona gourmet coffee is comparable to no other. Only 14,000 to 16,000 sacks of this precious Kona coffee is produced each year by the few hundred farms dotting the hills of this region, making pure Kona coffee the rare and sought after gourmet coffee in the world.
The History of Kona Coffee
Coffee originated in the highlands of Ethiopia, then made its way throughout the medieval Arabian countries as a substitute for forbidden alcohol. The Turks brought coffee to Europe as an unintended gift after unsuccessfully laying siege to Vienna in the 17th century. This beverage so delighted Europeans that coffee plantations were soon to be found in their South American, African and Indonesian colonies. In 1813 Don Francisco de Paula y Marin, a young Spanish advisor to King Kamehameha, introduced coffee to Hawai’i. A few years later, a Christian missionary’s experience revealed that coffee production was ideal in the narrow, low-lying 80 degree and humid region of Kona. Coffee trees thrived in the optimum climate where sunny mornings and afternoon cloud cover continues to be the norm. Locally the new beverage was called ‘Melikan koppe’ and was sold to passing whaling ships. Soon after, exports to the US mainland started what we know today as the Kona coffee industry. Hermann Widemann, a German advisor to Queen Lili’uokalani and King Kalakaua, introduced a highly aromatic Guatemalan coffee variety to Kona in 1892, which is now the well-known Kona Typica. Mark Twain wrote upon his visit around that same time: “Kona coffee has a richer flavor than any other, be it grown where it may and call it by what name you please.”