Kona CoffeeTM is a division of Absolute Palate®, a start-up venture chartered in the State of Hawaii as a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) (www.absolute-palate.com). Absolute Palate was established in 2015 on the basis of two purchased coffee farms in the iconic Kona Coffee Belt on the Big Island of Hawaii, and is owned by its Founders, Drs. and Cynthia A. Maryanoff. Bruce and Cyndie have had a long-standing passion for premium coffees, with a special interest in single-estate 100% Kona coffee. The coffee fruit (cherry) is derived from Cynthiana Farm in South Kona and Honalo Farm in North Kona, comprising about 3900 trees. The company grows, mills, roasts, and sells high-quality, single-estate 100% Kona coffee, focusing on premium and super-premium brands to satisfy the interests of coffee connoisseurs. We are building a state-of-the-art coffee processing/roasting facility at Honalo Farm, our corporate headquarters, and developing brands that represent the taste characteristics of specific terroirs. For direct-to-consumer sales, we operate the e-commerce website Absolutely! Kona CoffeeTM (www.absolutelykona.com). We are building an on-site decaffeination facility at Honalo Farm that will use supercritical fluid extraction (with supercritical CO2 at specific temperature and pressure) to remove caffeine, in our quest to produce flavor-retentive, 100% Kona decaf coffee with a distinct Kona flavor profile. Early research and development objectives are: (1) developing flavor-retentive 100% Kona decaf coffee; (2) developing an organic, single-estate 100% Kona decaf coffee. These decaf products would be excellent entries into the Kona coffee marketplace. We are committed to provide knowledgeable, passionate coffee consumers with a family of high-quality, single-estate, custom-roasted 100% Kona coffees, both regular and decaffeinated, with distinctive flavor profiles. Terroir [ter-wahr'] is a collection of special attributes derived from the geography (region, elevation, slope), geology (soil, hydrology), and microclimate (weather) of a specific location. This concept relates to the major influence of place on the properties of certain agricultural products, such as wine, coffee, tea, to***co, and chocolate. Terroir forms a basis for the widely used classification system that reflects Appellation of Origin (AOC), and underpins the reason to value single-estate or single-origin coffee. The harvest for our first coffee growing season, 2015, progressed over about four months, from the end of August to the end of December. The coffee fruit was hand-harvested in several passes through the orchards because ripening is asynchronous. This situation is common to natural coffee growing, as the rounds of flowering are sequential. Our fruit was wet-milled and the resulting parchment was sun-dried. After appropriate aging of each batch for at least 8 weeks, we hull portions to obtain green beans, keeping each batch separate. The beans are sorted into Kona Prime, Hawaii No.3, and Off-Grade. We medium-roast the Kona Prime beans and grind samples independently, then brew each to taste-test the flavor characteristics. Thus, individual batches of Kona Prime are assessed before any are combined into our Private Reserve brand, to ensure consistent, excellent taste quality. Our estate-grown 100% Hawaiian coffee is sold at an attractive price. We expect to have limited inventory, with availability beginning at the end of March 2016.
