Hawaiian coffee can only be called Pure Kona if it is grown on island's Gold Coast in Hawaii. Kona Gold is grown at high altitudes on the mountainous slopes of active volcanoes. The island's rich, volcanic soil lends an unmistakable character to what is regarded as the most beautiful coffee bean in the world. Although growing at a lower altitude than the world's other great coffees, the clouds that appear like clockwork each afternoon, plentiful rain, good shelter and the mineral-rich soil, more than compensate for this. What gives the coffee grown on this small estate the edge is that it is so carefully selected that workers can only harvest around twenty pounds of beans on a good day. This adds more expense to already high American labour prices but along with the equally impeccable processing, guarantees a smooth, rich body, sweet flavour with notes of tropical fruit and chocolate.
This coffee is produced from bushes transplanted from the famous Blue Mountains of Jamaica. As such it is a very refined, smooth coffee with complex aromatics that include cedar, ginger, spice, nutmeg and chocolate. It is more full-bodied than its prestigious cousin and offers up a very syrupy quality in the cup. The mountainous, moist cultivation area has loamy soil and a variety of native shade trees. Korofeigu Farmer's Cooperative Society is located in the Bena Bena valley of the Eastern Highlands between Goroka to the west and Henganofi to the east. The Coop is comprised of 97 members (some of whom are seen above near a nursery), with a total cultivation area of 112 hectares.
This complex coffee is sourced from the Arinagata Cooperative, a collection serving 2,000+ small hold farmers who grow coffee in the Aceh rainforest at altitudes up to 5,500 feet. The co-op is an organic and Fairtrade certified Gayo Arabica coffee producer and exporter. The flavours in the cup are herbal, grapefruit, cherry, chocolate, walnut, white grape, vanilla, apricot and spice. It has a syrupy richness, exquisite flavour and the native volcanic soil gives it a rich, silky character. It is, deservedly, among the most famous coffees in the world. The Gayo 1 coffee varietal is unique to Indonesia.
