Carta Coffee Merchants Makes Debut Following First Kona Harvest

Carta Coffee Merchants’ Nolyssa Farm. Photo courtesy of Carta Coffee Merchants.

Following months of development and a Kickstarter campaign that failed to fully blossom, Carta Coffee Merchants has officially made its product debut following the first harvest on a redeveloped farm in the celebrated Kona region of Hawaii.

The company was created earlier this year by Scott Burr, a third-generation Sonoma Valley, Calif., winemaker who decided to try his hand at coffee, where comparisons run aplenty. Coffees available from CCM include those from the first harvest of the 60-acre Nolyssa farm (named after Burr’s children Nolan and Alyssa), as well as from other Kona farms, and the company is pitching the first available offerings as 100 percent Kona — an important distinction when coffee products containing only a percentage of Kona-grown coffee can be labeled as Kona.

The first available roasted and packaged products include a “Peaberry” that retails for $27 per 6 ounces, as well as a series called “Latitude” that includes wet-processed coffees or natural-process coffees that can be purchased individually or in a side-by-side tasting sampler.

Burr’s cohort in the coffee farm redevelopment venture has been George Yasuda of Tiare Lani Coffee, who has been growing Kona coffee for decades while consulting in the region. Immediate plans for the farm include 2,500 new coffee trees.

Coffee drying at various stages at the farm. CCM Facebook photo.