The slopes of Hawaii’s central island volcano Mauna Loa is home to a small number of coffee plantations.The island’s rich, volcanic soil lends an unmistakeable character to what is regarded as the most beautiful coffee bean in the world. Although grown 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, compensate this. Such smoothness, good body, rich flavour and exquisite aroma would usually only be found in coffee grown at greater heights such as Jamaican Blue Mountain. Beans of this quality are not found throughout Kona, 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 the ideal sugar and acid content for a perfect coffee.