Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Holualoa Street Fest

The tiny village of Holualoa was the kick off point for the Kona Coffee Cultural Festival, as a street fair was held in the artists colony high above the town of Kona.  Holualoa was where coffee cultivation began in Kona over 100 years ago as Japanese laborers, newly freed from indentured servitude in the cane and pineapple fields of the islands and facing discrimination in hiring and lacking jobs began cultivating coffee in the highlands here.  

Now 100 years later Kona Coffee has become a highly specialized gourmet product grown by over 600 farmers, who range from aging (OK, mature) hippies, to third generation Japanese families, to neuveau riche investors, to retirees seeking a lifestyle of gentleman farmer, to everything in between.  The bottom line is that Kona Coffee is the best coffee on the planet, and with dozens of highly sophisticated organic farms producing between 1000 lbs to, say 10,000 pounds a year of this amazing product, it is not an exageration to call them the Boutique Coffee Chateaus of Holualoa, Kealekekua, Captain Cook and Honaunau.  

The Devil Dog knows many of these farmers individually and has been buying their product over the internet for years. A pound of 100% Kona Coffee can range from $20 - $36  and is well worth the cost. You routinely pay $50 or more for a bottle of good wine and its gone in a night. A pound of coffee may last you weeks or more, depending on how you drink it, and you will never taste coffee like this. 

Make sure you buy ONLY 100% Kona coffee from individual farms. There is a glut of an inferior product called Kona Blend which IS ONLY 10% Kona coffee and 90% inferior south and central american beans.  This is an ongoing scandal denigrating and despoiling the beauty of 100% Kona coffee. You wouldn't take a bottle of Chateau Lafite and blend it with a bottle of Sebastiani table wine. The Devil Dog is emphatic on this point:  ONLY BUY 100% Kona Coffee direct from the coffee maker. Support real farmers who craft their product the way real winemakers craft their wine. More on this as our week progresses.


1 comment:

Kent E St. John said...

Love it Dog, I am heading to Belgium in the AM. When we get back gotta get the Devil Dog link up at GoNOMAD!!