John Langenstein steadies himself against the rocky tilt of his farm on the steep slopes of Hawaii's Mauna Loa, on the Big Island, and picks a bright red berry, about the size of a cherry tomato, from a small tree. Like many winegrowers, Langenstein uses only his own estate-grown fruit, processing it carefully according to long tradition, aging it for months or even years.

He squeezes the berry above a visitor's cupped hand, and two coffee beans coated with a hazy white foam drop out. "Try it," he suggests. The foam tastes sweet, like candy, but it's more than that; there are overtones of other flavors - hints of spices and nuts and flowers.

To turn those berries into coffee, Langenstein will ferment away the sugars and sun-dry the beans. Those wonderful flavors will permeate the beans, ultimately making a more interesting brew. Traditional coffee processing demands time-consuming procedures filled with hand labor, many of which have parallels in winemaking. Of course, it all pays off in America's most highly prized cup o'joe - Kona coffee.

Unfortunately, Kona coffee has another, less savory parallel with wine. Much of what is sold as Kona coffee isn't what it appears to be. Much of it is Kona blend, which can legally contain as little as 10 percent Kona coffee. Langenstein fumes, "Hell, that doesn't matter. At 10 percent, you can't taste the difference. but you are still charged a premium because it has the name Kona on it."

Hawaii produces the only American coffee on the market - which is surprising for the country that initiated the coffee break. you get good coffee from the other Hawaiian islands (except Lanai), but there's no question that Kona is king. A recent University of Hawaii study reported that 20 million pounds of Kona coffee are sold annually, even though the Kona coffee harvest averages only 2 million pounds a year.

A fraud action taken in 1996 against on coffee firm in Hawaii determined that some Kona blends contained no Kona coffee at all. The temptation to cheat is huge. Kona blends comprise the most profitable segment of the specialty coffee industry, says Langenstein. True Kona coffee retails for $20 per pound and up (Kona is a rare commodity, which explains the price tag). Consumers will pay because the coffee is that good.

In the early 1990s, Langenstein and other estate Kona coffee growers tried to create a certification mark for Kona coffee grown in the Kona district of Hawaii, similar to one used on Maui onions. Opposed by big coffee companies, the Kona mark never materialized. The only assurance for consumers is a label stating that the product in question contains 100 percent Kona coffee - or better yet, 100 percent estate-grown Kona coffee. If your coffee purveyor offers Kona, ask to see the original package before buying. Unless it has such a label, assume it's a blend.

"Kona blend has definitely tarnished the image of Kona coffee," says Jeff Lewis, who roasts and sells pure Kona coffee at The Kona Coffee Store on Highway 11 in the heart of the district. He also sells it through the mail and over the Internet. "People gasp at the price and say, 'I can get it on the mainland for $10.' What they don't realize is that they're not buying real Kona coffee."

A lanky, bald, deeply tanned man named "Stretch" arrives. He is wearing flip-flops, a Batman T-shirt and is carrying a burlap bag half-filled with green (unroasted) coffee beans. Lewis agrees to roast the beans, which are intended for Stretch's personal use, by 5 p.m. Locals often grow and brew their own coffee, just as residents of wine country might make their own wine.

"What makes it special is when someone takes a sip and says, 'That's the best cup of coffee I've ever had,'" says Lewis with a smile. "That's what makes my day."

So what's the difference? The character of Kona coffee hits the palate from the first sip. Pure Kona made in a drip pot has a creaminess and a complexity of flavor, combined with a lively acid balance, that makes wine comparisons valid. Made as espresso, it has an incredibly smooth character. It is an aristocratic coffee.

To get that way, the coffee must be grown on the volcanic, wet-facing slops of Mauna Loa, the second-tallest mountain in Hawaii. The Kona coast stretches south of Kailua and includes the towns of Honalo, Kainaliu, Captain Cook and Keokea. It's a beautiful stretch of mountainous coast, regularly misted by light rain showers. Coffee and macadamia nut plantations spring up from the hillside forests.

A dirt road bumps and winds up the mountainside to the farm, where Langenstein can produce 8,000 pounds of coffee in a good year. Pickers squeeze fresh coffee beans from the fruit and fill baskets with the sugar-coated beans (called "cherry"). They empty the baskets into a rinsing vat, where the beans ferment overnight. Then the beans are dried for five days on concrete pads covered with a removable corrugated steel roof. The pads must be raked regularly to keep the beans from spoiling. When the beans are dry enough, they develop a flaky, parchment like coating, and are then packed into burlap bags and transferred to an aging shed.

"I've been experimenting with aging," says Langenstein. "It's like oak aging for wine. All my coffee is aged at least two or three months [before roasting], but I have some that has aged for a whole year in parchment. It mellows and brings out inherent subtleties that distinguish one estate from another."

Langenstein also makes sure air is circulated through the shed to keep mold from forming. "I guarantee my coffee to be mold-free," he says. "You have no idea how important that is. Go into a coffee warehouse and slap a bag. That cloud that puffs out is mold. Most people who say they can't drink coffee are really reacting to the mold."

The beans are milled to remove the papery coating, but first Langenstein borrows another idea from winemaking: He puts the beans through a selection process, removing any wizened, white or beige beans. After roasting, they appear remarkably uniform and unbroken, and these beans are made into coffee that wants no cream or sugar. "I used to pour cream and sugar into coffee," Langenstein says. "Now I would no sooner add anything to my coffee than I would pour 7-Up into my wine."

Langenstein knows about wine. He owned a successful catering business in Sausalito, Calif., before moving to Hawaii in 1975. The Big Island was a pretty remote place then, and it didn't take much to buy the wildly overgrown spread near Keokea, which he did not know was a coffee plantation. He discovered the 90-year-old trees, and knowing that old vines made better wine, he picked about 12 pounds of coffee to see if the held true. "It was strictly seat-of-the-pants processing. But it was the best coffee I ever had," he says.

To earn enough money to live, he worked as a bartender in resort hotels, where his passion for Kona coffee finally convinced him to start making and marketing his own. Incensed that tourists drinking Kona blend thought it was the real thing, he made a pot of his own coffee behind the bar. Pretty soon, hotel guests were passing up the free Kona blend at breakfast to buy Langenstein's coffee at $2 a cup.

Members of the Kona Coffee Council market their coffees as 100 percent estate-grown. Many of them welcome visitors and sell the roasted beans through the mail and over the Internet. (For more information on sources for 100 percent estate-grown Kona coffee, visit the council's Web site: www.kona-coffee-council.com. It has links to member estate's sites and mail-order information.) Among specialty coffees, pure Kona ranks among the most expensive, ranging from $20 to $30 per pound. But Langenstein has an answer for that, too.

"I'll pay $30 to $40 for a good bottle of wine without blinking," he says. "You can get - what? - six glasses of wine from a bottle? Because it's so rich, I get 60 cups from a pound of my coffee. That's 50 cents a cup."

You can't buy a decent wine for that.