Buy Kona Coffee Online

Kona Coffee is grown and cultivated in the North and South areas of the Kona District on the Island of Hawai’i, commonly called the Big Island for its physical size. Kona Coffee has a reputation as a rare, expensive coffee with an exquisite taste for the discerning coffee drinker, and as such, has engendered an entire industry to grow and harvest it, package and market it, and to protect it in the global marketplace against less expensive coffee blends that take advantage of the Kona Coffee name and excellent marketability.

Reverend Samuel Ruggles, a member of the first American missionary party to arrive in Hawai’i from New England, is generally credited with bringing the first coffee cuttings to Kona where they flourished in the unique climate and volcanic soil abundant there.

Kona’s coffee-growing belt is extremely small by world standards, lending to its rarity and value to coffee connoisseurs. The growing region stretches for about 30 miles from north to south and is only about a mile wide. The best Kona Coffee grows only between 800-2500 feet above sea level. But the terrain is not a flat stretch of rolling fertile farmland and plantations. Remnants of hardened lava flows dot the Kona landscape, and coffee farmers have eked out an existence by growing their coffee on sloping acreage. Kona Coffee is primarily grown on small farms rarely more than 10 acres in size.

Cultivating Kona’s rocky soil is labor intensive because each tree is handpicked over and over again during the 6 month growing and harvesting season. Before the coffee is graded after handpicking, it is pulped, dried and hulled. Kona Coffee’s grades range from Kona Prime to the highest grade of Kona Extra Fancy. “Peaberry” is the rarest of the rare; coffee usually has 2 beans per cherry. When a coffee cherry has only 1 bean; it is called a “peaberry” – so Peaberry #1 and Peaberry Prime are the rarest of Kona coffees.

There is an entire Kona Coffee culture and industry that has evolved in the sun-kissed Kona region of Hawai’i. Visitors come from all over the globe to visit the coffee farms of Kona; the Kona Coffee Festival held annually in early November attracts thousands.

Where to Buy Kona Coffee Online