What do Two Buck Chuck and Kona Blends have in common?

For some years, Napa Valley vines were plagued by vintners who used the Napa name on wines bottled in Napa from grapes grown elsewhere. So that "Napa" Two-Buck-Chuck you bought at Trader Joes was probably Modesto grape juice trucked to Napa and bottled as a "boutique" wine.

If this issue sounds like the problem Kona coffee farmers have with the use of the Kona name on 90% foreign, imported coffee, it is. Yeah, Kona Blends, I'm talking about you again.

Unlike Hawaii (to date), California passed a truth-in-labeling law in the year 2000 to protect the Napa wine name from exploitation. Unless 75% of the grapes in the bottle are grown in Napa, the Napa name cannot be used on the label. The fancy lawyers for Two-Buck-Chuck challenged the law all the way to the US Supreme Court...and lost. Yeah!. The California law was upheld, because it's basically the right thing to do for consumers and for grape growers in the Napa Valley.

Two very significant findings apply quite obviously to the case of Kona coffee blends and to trademarked names using the geographic origin name, Kona:
• Misleading advertising is not protected by “free speech” or by previously registered trademarks.
• The BATF finding that “explicitly determined that consumers believe that a geographic brand name on a wine label indicates the source of the grapes. Further, that inclusion of an accurate appellation of origin on the front label was insufficient to dispel the misimpression created by the misleading geographic brand name.”

In other words...If you have the name Kona on the label, people think it's just that...Kona coffee. Kona blends (aka 90% mystery beans, 10% Kona beans) are NOT Kona coffee.

Now if we can only get our Hawaii state government to pass a Truth-in Labeling law that will protect the consumers and the 650 Kona coffee farmers, Two Buck Chuck in Kona will be a thing of the past.