Hawaii and Kona Coffee

Our tour guide stands next to a 118 year old coffee plant at Greenwell Farms 

Kona coffee is pretty famous, and you can only get the real thing from Kona, on the west side of the Big Island.   It's not cheap, but it's the smoothest coffee I've tasted outside of Italy.

We tried some of that coffee at Greenwell Farms, which dates back to 1850, when Englishman Henry Nicholas Greenwell purchased land for farming on the island.  He started by buying and marketing other farms' coffee, but it wasn't until after his death that his wife and ten children started growing their own coffee plants, starting in 1900.  They still buy coffee berries from other farmers, but grow most of it themselves.

Our fiesty tour guide, a 21 year resident of the island, told us it takes 7 lbs. of coffee berries to yield a pound of coffee beans.  A crew of 25 hand picks several hundred pounds of berries a day when the season is on.  We watched a little of the processing action as well.

Coffee plant up close.  The red berries are ready to pick. 

The coffee plants are grown in volcanic soil with natural rainfall, and some fertilizer.

p.s. Just read in the the local Drive Big Island summer issue that next big story in Hawaiian coffee will be along the Hamakua Coast.