Our Story

Early Days

In 2011, two of us were living in the Cook Islands, doing doctoral research and working for the Ministry of Education. Kava had largely fallen out of use there, but there were still old plants growing in a garden, and that is where we drank our first shell. We loved it straight away: the deep calm, the clear head.

We kept drinking it for the rest of our time on the island. Fresh root when we could get it, and the dried powder sold locally when we could not. The dried was much less pleasant, and closing that gap is more or less what we have spent the years since doing.

Back in Auckland we started sharing dried root with other doctoral students and lecturers at the University of Auckland. The sessions ran once or twice a week, and we worked through kava from as many growing regions as we could get hold of.

Pictured above: One of our informal sessions on campus circa 2012 (University of Auckland)

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The Kava Appreciation Society

The sessions kept growing, and the informal University of Auckland Kava Appreciation Society took shape around them. The aim was simple: try as many kavas as we could and learn about the plant and the culture behind it. After a while we shortened the name to the Kava Society. In October 2014 we built the first version of this website.

Having sampled hundreds of kavas in New Zealand and around the Pacific, we got to know the differences between cultivars, and we became far more aware of the issues of kava quality and nobility. You can read more about those in our About Kava section.

No New Zealand supplier could give us the quality or the range we wanted, so by 2013 we started travelling to the islands to find growers and processors we could work with directly. We also began testing every batch, so we knew exactly what we were drinking.

Pictured above: A quick session at our neighbour, Auckland University of Technology (2015)

Pictured above: A kava sampling session at the University of Auckland (2016)

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Closing the Gap

That gap between fresh root and dried powder is what we set out to close. We found partners in Vanuatu who were willing to work on it with us, and it took years. Which plants to harvest and when, how to clean and peel them, and above all how to dry them without cooking off what makes fresh kava worth drinking.

We would not have got there without the skill and the investment of our Vanuatu partners. What we have now is as close to fresh kava on the islands as a dried powder can get. You can read about every step that goes into making it here.

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Our Online Shop

We only meant to import kava for ourselves. But people who drank with us started asking where they could get it, and then people who had only heard about it started asking too. In early 2014 we added a small shop to the Society's website. In 2018 we set up The Kava Society Limited to run it properly.

Selling it turned out to be the best way to make the case for it. Kava is not for everyone, but most people who write it off have only ever had the weak or stale stuff. Give them a good cultivar, prepared properly, and they usually understand what the fuss is about.

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From Campus Sessions to Kava Events and Outreach

Around 2018 the campus sessions wound down. People had finished their degrees or moved to other universities, and the group got smaller. We kept meeting, but at pop-ups and events around Auckland rather than in a seminar room.

What we kept doing was the research and the advocacy. We have run workshops and seminars on kava, contributed to publications, and fielded a steady stream of enquiries from journalists and researchers who want to know how the plant, the science and the industry actually work.

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Four Shells Kava Lounge

In 2019 we co-founded Auckland's first kava bar, Four Shells Kava Lounge, at Victoria Park Market. It runs as a separate business, owned and managed by Anau Mesui and Todd Henry, both of whom have been part of the Kava Society from early on.

Four Shells is our physical home in Auckland. It is where you can drink our kava rather than make it yourself, where we launch new products, and where we hold most of our events.

We hope this website helps you learn about kava and find answers to some frequently asked questions. If you have any questions or would like to try some kava with us, please get in touch.