Kailua-Kona

Kailua-Kona is the main town on the west coast of the island of Hawaii, and a base for the Kona coffee belt, the band of farms on the slopes above the coast. The three tours in this guide are in Kailua-Kona itself and near the Mamalahoa Highway: Greenwell Farms, in Kealakekua, and Mountain Thunder offer free guided tours, and Hula Daddy, in Holualoa, charges 35 dollars per person for an hour with a tasting.

Practical notes

• Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport is north of the town.
• The farms are upslope from the coast: a car is the practical way to reach them.

Coffee culture around Kailua-Kona

The Kona Coffee Cultural Festival, held every November over ten days, describes itself as Hawaii's oldest food festival. It honours the heritage of Kona's coffee families and the achievements of its farmers, with a cupping competition, a lei contest and a scholarship competition on the programme, and its board includes growers and the general manager of the UCC Hawaii farm in Holualoa, one of the island's few certified Q Graders.

Who grows the coffee

The Kona Coffee Farmers Association, a non-profit trade body, describes itself as the voice of Kona coffee farmers and promotes the farms to visitors, noting that some offer farm tours and a few provide rooms and meals. Its newsletters follow the farmers' pests, the coffee berry borer and coffee leaf rust, and the long-running debate over blend labelling laws.

A farm frozen in the 1920s

South of Kailua-Kona, in Captain Cook, the Kona Historical Society runs the Kona Coffee Living History Farm at 82-6199 Mamalahoa Highway. It is open on Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 am to 2 pm, self-guided, with costumed interpreters in a 1920s farmhouse. Visitors walk among the coffee trees, meet a Kona Nightingale, the donkey once used to carry the harvest, and see the kuriba and hoshidana, the mill and the drying deck the farming families used.