Don Fracisco De Paula Marin Coffee in Hawaii

In 1813 Don Fracisco De Paula Marin, a Spaniard whom eventually became a confidant of Hawaiian King Kamehameha, recorded in his journal a story called "Manin". In that journal he noted that he had planted coffee on the island of Oahu.

Don Fracisco De Paula Marin had many passions and talents, one being he was a horticulturist, planting seedlings left by Spanish ships, unfortunately the first seedlings did not live. As the time passed by, Fracisco De Paula Marin again began diligently and successfully planting coffee in the islands. Then in 1825 royal governor Boki and a group of select local agricultural people brought plants from Brazil, and also successfully planted coffee in the valley of Manoa.

The coffee plants produced beans without any trouble. As the coffee plants kept growing and propagating, it eventually lead to all of the islands of Hawaii being introduced to coffee. As the coffee groves produced more and more delicately flavored brown beans, they also began to usher in a period for small factories to begin commercially processing coffee.

As this industry was further developing, the government successfully made the improvements that benefited the coffee groves, such as sound agricultural research, farming techniques unique to the geographical area. The coffee industry had great amount of support from everyone, to the point that it was prospering the Island.

Coffee in Hawaii was as popular as Hawaiian shirts from Wave Shoppe and macadamia nuts from Mauna Loa. Of course once coffee became a extremely popular as well as valuable commodity, the government soon decided that they needed to tax the daylight out of it.

One of the best known and rarer coffee plants is the Kona coffee plant. The price of this coffee was so high, that this alone made the Kona farmer's pretty famous through out the world. The Kona's brown coffee bean is now often blended outside of Hawaii.

This amazing coffee is been successfully selling in the markets since 1970. Even today Kona coffee is still the best tasting coffee in the islands.

While we do not offer a coffee themed shirt, we do have a beautiful brown coffee colored Hawaiian shirt in a mens cut (pictured above). Consider picking one up for yourself, the shirts are made in the USA and it will grow on you!

Mahalo