Mark Twain says it so eloquently, "Kona Coffee has a richer flavor than any other, be it grown where it may and call it by what name you please" 1866, Letters from Hawaii. His judgment holds firm today. The Hawaiian Islands, with their warm, moist South Seas’ climate and rich volcanic soil, are the only place in the U.S. where coffee grows and thrives.


The Big Island
The site is stunning from the air, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, two of the volcanic mountains that form the Big Island of Hawaii, thrust up from out of the ocean, godlike in their grandeur. Along the southwestern slopes of the Mauna Loa hidden somewhere in all the volcanic mountaintops’ lava and greenery, is a coffee lovers paradise - The Kona Coffee Belt. There a group of farms for more than a century have hand cultivated small crops of gourmet beans that are among the most treasured in the world.

The Aloha Spirit
The Kona Coffee Belt is sparsely populated and home to many immigrants, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Samoans and "Haoles", the term used to refer to Caucasians with roots deep in Hawaiian soil, all third and fourth generation coffee farmers with extraordinary stories. It seems among the residents, no matter their ethnic origins, they all know each other and work together in perfect harmony, sharing one common bond - their passion for Kona Coffee. For the farmers it is more than coffee, it is a way of life. The "Aloha Spirit" is captured in the passion for meticulous painstaking work, growing, cultivating and processing Kona Coffee. The Kona Coffee belt, marked 180 on the highway map, is home to more than 500 farms, most of which are 3 to 5 acres with modest facilities and equipment. These farms total approximately 2000 acres of planted coffee, which annually yields 2 million pounds of beans. Brazil, on the other hand, accounts for more than 1 billion pounds of beans per year.