The best coffee in Hawaii isn’t Kona

When you think of Hawaiian coffee you think Kona coffee, right? But Kona Coffee is just a consortium of small coffee farmers, some who grow fabulous berries and some who don’t. What you get when you buy “Kona Coffee” is a blend of beans that includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.

As the Coffee Review (which bills itself as “The world’s leading coffee buying guide”) notes, Kona coffee “remains a bete-noir among many coffee professionals, who consider it an overpriced, weak-kneed imposter of a coffee they are forced to fuss over owing to the misguided enthusiasm of beach-besotted consumers.”

Well, I wouldn’t be that harsh. I remember in January when I was staying at the Moana Surfrider in Honolulu and I’d get up early, throw on some shorts and a t-shirt, and walk downstairs and sit on the veranda drinking a French-press Kona from the Honolulu Coffee Company next door while reading the local paper. That Kona tasted damn fine to me (or was I just another beach-besotted consumer?).

But after spending the better part of a day with Martin Amaro of Kauai Coffee Company, sipping his dark roasted estate peaberry, which has a slight chocolate taste to it, I have to say I like Kauai coffee better.

Photos by David Lansing.

Originally the Kauai coffee estate was a sugar plantation. But in the ‘80s it became clear that growing sugar on the islands was no longer profitable (same with pineapple), so the company burned the fields and planted patchouli (for fragrances), cocoa, macadamia trees, and some coffee trees. The idea was to see which would be most profitable, a decision that was rendered moot by hurricane Iniki in 1992.

Everything growing on the estate was wiped out. Including 400 acres of macadamia nut trees and the farm’s first coffee crop, which was about to be harvested. Miraculously, the coffee trees came back. Not so the macadamia trees. Which is when the company decided to stick with coffee.

Martin Amoro checking coffee berries at Kauai Coffee.

So the other morning I went into the fields with Martin and pulled some berries from the coffee trees and then went back to the processing plant to see how they’re washed and sorted, the greens from the ripes (the greens sink in the water bath and the ripes float), then dried in various stages, shelled and graded for size, density, and color, before finally being roasted and bagged. And I’ll tell you what—it’s a lot more complicated to make a fine cup of coffee than it is to make a good bottle of wine.

Which explains why the 10 ounces of dark roast Peaberry Estate Reserve I picked up to take home set me back $14.50. Still, I figured it was cheaper than a bottle of Chateau Margaux (and would last longer).