She Gave My Kona Coffee the Worst Score of the Competition. Then She Asked to See the Farm

“Sixty-eight,” she said. “Next.”

She didn’t even look up.

My name is Keoni Kahale. I’m 46 years old, and I grow coffee on twelve acres on the slopes of Hualalai, above Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Kona coffee is some of the most expensive coffee in the world. The volcanic soil, the afternoon clouds, the elevation. My grandmother started our farm in 1958 with three hundred trees and a wooden drying deck.

Every November, the Kona Coffee Festival holds a cupping competition. Farmers submit their best beans. Professional judges taste them blind and score them out of a hundred.

A score in the high eighties means your coffee is extraordinary. Restaurants and roasters will call you. Prices go up.

That year, I thought I had the best crop of my life.

One of the judges was a coffee buyer from the mainland, the head of sourcing for one of the biggest coffee companies in America. Her name was Claire Matsuda. Mid-forties, black hair in a sharp bob, white linen shirt, a silver spoon she carried in her own leather case.

When my coffee came to her station, she slurped it, swirled it, spit it into a cup, and wrote down a number.

“Sixty-eight,” she said. “Next.”

Sixty-eight is the lowest score a farmer can get without being disqualified.

The whole room heard it.