The only producer of pure Kona who seemed to be making it big turned out to be a fraud. Officials of Kona Kai coffee were convicted in 1996 in a $20 million swindle in which cheaper Central American green (unroasted) coffees were put into bags marked "Kona." Not all French bread comes from France, one of the miscreants argued; "why should all Kona coffee come from Kona?"
There is, in fact, no need to flout the law. A perfectly legal way to make money on Kona coffee is to blend it with less expensive coffees and sell the result as Kona.
That's what big roasters do. They benefit from the name while bypassing most of the cost that goes along with using only carefully hand-tended, handpicked beans from the Kona coast. They must label their stuff "Kona blend," and the purists can call theirs "100 percent Kona," but the word "blend" somehow ends up in smaller type.
