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OAHU — When Robert Dawson first considered sugarcane, he was thinking of biofuel. But his focus soon shifted to love spells.
“As I was looking through botanical records from what used to be the Hawaii Sugar Growers Association, I came across the story of hana aloha, a love-magic ceremony that was done in ancient Hawaii,” Dawson says. He discovered that “there were several varieties of Hawaiian sugarcane that were believed (to create) an inseparable infatuation between two people.”
He pivoted from biofuel research and delved into the ancient uses of sugar cane. In Hawaii, the crop has long been associated with the plantations that shaped the islands politically, environmentally and culturally, but Dawson realized sugar cane’s history went even further. It was used as medicine, as energy for soldiers and for casting spells.
“It was an integral part of the ancient Polynesian culture that went by the wayside when the plantations came in,” he says.
So Dawson set out to preserve the ancient canes that had fallen out of cultivation — plantations had turned away from their variability in favor of cane that grew consistently sturdy and straight. And in 2014, Dawson turned to single-varietal agricole rum as a way of perpetuating the native Hawaiian canes and their stories. While most rum is made from molasses, a by-product of sugar making, Ko Hana’s rum is distilled from fresh sugarcane juice.
At Ko Hana’s new tasting room in Kunia, you can taste rum from different sugarcane varietals side-by-side, like lahi, which has notes of tropical fruit, while the manulele has earthy undertones. Manulele, literally “flying bird,” was one of the love-magic canes used to bind a far away love. The other hana aloha (literally, “work love”) canes included papaa (“hold fast”), which strengthened romantic relationships, and pilimai (“come hither”), used to spark lust.
Today, Ko Hana grows 34 different sugarcane varieties on 22 acres in Kunia and Waialua. On the distillery tour, you’ll walk through a selection of the canes in the field, some dark maroon and spindly, others striped pink and chartreuse. Inside, you’ll glimpse a massive, gleaming stainless-steel pot still, topped with a copper column.
After the cane juice is fermented and then distilled, the white rum rests for three months to let some of the ethanol evaporate and the flavor mellow, while the dark rums are aged in charred oak barrels or used whiskey barrels. The tour ends with a flight of four rums, two white, a barrel-aged version and a chocolate liqueur, made by infusing Ko Hana’s rum with cacao from Hawaii Island.
A trip to Ko Hana is also worthwhile for a glimpse into Kunia, an often overlooked part of the island that was once home to Del Monte’s pineapple farms and a plantation camp where workers lived. (Ko Hana’s tasting room used to be the plantation’s post office.) The area is still an agricultural hub on the island, with one of the largest aquaponics operations on Oahu, as well as other small agribusinesses and farms.
Details: Open from 10 am. to 6 p.m. daily at 92-1770 Kunia Road, Kunia, Oahu. Book a rum tasting tour ($25) at www.kohanarum.com.