Non-Kona Big Island coffe

Snip

Woody DeCasere wrote: 'Is true kona that different from Kauai??'
Yes. The Kona districts are on the Big Island which is volcanically 
very active. About 1/4 of the entire island has been resurfaced with 
new lava flows just since the time of European contact [1778]. Kauai 
is one of the oldest islands in the Hawaiian island chain. Volcanos 
there have been extinct for millions of years. Soils derived from 
recent volcanism are quite different from very aged volcanic soils. 
This could be one of the many factors that cause the coffees from the 
two locations to differ. Island chains such as Hawaii which are formed 
by movement of an ocean tectonic plate over a stationary mantle hot 
spot tend to have decreasing elevations as you more along the island 
chain away from the hot spot since those further away are older and 
have had more time elapse to both erode and sink back into the ocean 
by depressing the ocean plate under there own weight. The high point 
in Kauai is around 5000' as compared to the Big Island which has 
several summits over 13000'.
Larry Engish wrote: 'The Ka'u story is interesting - wonder what 
varieties they are growing?  Also what elevation?  My (flawed) memory 
of the Big Island is that Ka'u is mostly lava and very windy - maybe 
the areas Douglas visited are cozied up to South Kona, i.e. just E or 
SE of that district ???'
Larry: South and Southeast. The lower elevations of Ka'u can in fact 
be very windy. The area down near Southpoint [the Sourthern most point 
in the US] is the location of most of the wind turbines on the Big 
Island. The area with the coffee that I looked at was not very windy 
at all. It was sandwiched between two ridges that must have afforded 
protection. The elevation was only about 2200' [730m]. This area is 
shown on maps as 'Wood Valley'.
Three or four varieties were pointed out to me. I remember that some 
was derived from Guatemalan sources and there was a yellow maturing 
variety of some sort. There was also one called Ka'u Special that is 
said to have been developed by the U of H for the Ka'u conditions.
I have since read Tom's discussion of Hawaiian coffee on the SM 
website where he does mention Ka'u coffee in passing "And in the 
districts of Kau and Hilo on the big island, they are trying to 
produce coffee."
Link to his discussion here:
http://www.sweetmarias.com/hawaii_kona_coffeeinfo.htm