Maui Gold Pineapple tour
We were picked up for the Maui Gold Pineapple tour just outside the Haliimaile Distilling Company. We boarded the air conditioned bus and our informative driver shuttled us across the street and up into the pineapple fields.
I had a few questions about pineapples that I was hoping would be answered on this foray. We stopped at a field that was thick with pineapple plants and littered with ripening fruit. Our guide explained to us that this field was just one harvest old and after the third and final harvest the vegetation is even thicker. The packers weigh in and follow behind a huge conveyor, stretching out across half the field where they send their freshly cut fruit down the line to the truck. 
18 months to grow
Most pineapple take about 18 months to grow to maturity and consume a whopping gallon of water per day at the height of growth. They will live on to produce again maybe two more times and then the field is plowed under.
We visited a newly planted field dotted with slips of a previous pineapple harvest. The planting has been done by the same core of farmers for years and is all planted by hand at incredible speed. It is not unheard of for one planter to fill a field of up to 10000 plus plants in a day.
The slips
The slips (some would wrongly call them suckers) are removed from picked pineapples and unusable fruit. Twisting the top off a pineapple gently will yield you the top slip but in fact you could start a pineapple from even a single leaf. The other slips are found growing off the bases and of mature fruit. The slips are loaded into a huge truck with an air canon on it and when the field and planters are ready they riddle the fields with slips so the planters can just pick them up and plant them properly without having to carry them, adding to the speed of planting. At last we ended at the top of the pineapple field looking back down to the coast and Kahului. It was time to have a taste right in the field and discover the flavours of the different stages of ripeness of a Maui Gold Pineapple. Pineapples stop ripening after being picked so they are harvested with the consumer in mind. Most fruit is picked when just ripe for export but fruit that is sold locally is picked at a riper point because it only has a few miles to travel. The over ripe fruit and fermenting fruit is saved for our friends at Haliimaile Distilling Company to make Pau vodka. 
Our guide pulled out a knife
Our guide pulled out a knife and deftly cut up a pineapple of every ripeness for us all to try. The familiar taste of a barely ripe pineapple, like we may find in Canada, was not very exciting but the insane sweetness and under tones of coconut in the very ripe, almost all yellow fruit, was like no other pineapple we have had before, topping out somewhere in the 95% sugar area. You will never find this ripe a fruit in stores. You must take the tour to be able to savour this baby.
Sticky fingers
Fingers sticky and back on the bus we headed to the packing facility to see how all these pineapples get handled for shipping. On our way, we crossed over a narrow canal that transports water from the rainy side of the island to the pineapple fields in Haliimaile. These canals also feed the sugar cane fields and were built way back in 1876 by the Baldwin brothers who dominated Maui with tens of thousands of acres of pineapple and sugar cane. 
The huge packing plant
A fast paced stroll through the huge packing plant with a mix of old and new machinery ended with each of us getting a pineapple of our own to take home.
It was a tasty tour to say the least, that offered up gorgeous views and interesting insight into one our favorite fruits.
One more weird fact about pineapples is that as they sit in an upright position the heavy sugars will eventually concentrate more at the bottom of the pineapple making that bottom slice the sweetest possible.
To book your tour head to the Maui Pineapple Tour website.
Disclosure: We were guests of the Maui Visitors Bureau, all opinions are our own.
Really interesting to find out more about one of my favorite foods, pineapple! We ate plenty of amazingly sweet and ripe pineapple when we traveled through Central America and I agree, these are NOTHING like the pineapples found in North American supermarkets! I have to confess that, up until about 10 years ago, I pictured pineapple growing on trees … Americans can really be ignorant about our food sources when all of it comes wrapped, packaged and displayed in the modern stores!
Oh, this brings back memories of the splendid pineapples we enjoyed in Phnom Penh, where we bought them dripping juicy goodness and beautifully carved at the Orsay market. I’d very much like to tour the pineapple fields of Maui and have a taste of the Hawaiian lovelies!
I went to a pineapple plantation in Australia many years ago and I remember how the fruit tasted completely different to what we get in the supermarkets. I like the idea of overripe fruit being used for distilling – I’ll have to look out for Pau vodka!
There really isn’t any comparison, fresh fruit is the best!
I used to live in Hawaii! There really is nothing like a Maui pineapple!
Lucky you! We’ve never eaten so much fresh fruit as when we lived on Maui.
Seeing great stories about Hawaii is killing me! It’s the state I need to visit to get to all 50. Can’t believe I haven’t made it there yet. I think that will be my New Years resolution… Go to Hawaii!!!!
That sounds like a great resolution! I swear if I was a US citizen I’d live there!
Yum! Truly fresh pineapple is the best! Believe it or not, fresh tropical fruit is one of the reasons I want to retire somewhere in the tropics …
I believe it, it’s one of the reasons we love being there!
What an amazing experience! I would LOVE to taste a pineapple that ripe – note to self to pack something like alochol wipes or napkins afterwards to take care of stick fingers lol. But sounds like a fabulous day. Thanks for sharing!
Haha, I might actually send a suggestion to the company to have wipes on hand 😉
Very interesting story on visiting the pineapple fields. I love visiting Hawaii and I can’t believe we haven’t done this yet. We need to get back there! I love the tip about the bottom of an upright pineapple being the sweetest part – makes perfect sense!
It is an interesting fact and we tested it when we got home, it’s true!
I had no idea that there was vodka made from Pineapple, something to look for next time I’m in Maui. I love that they let you taste all the different ranges of pineapple ripeness. They really are more delicious, closer to their source.
Wow — like so many commenters here, pineapple is one of my favourite fruits so I would love to do a tour like this someday! Blows the “tours” they used to do at the Big Pineapple here in Queensland out of the water!
Now this would be one cool tour to do. I found the flavours of fruit and veges on a trip to Turkey to be so intense that I can well imagine it was a veritable pineapple bomb on eating. I had no idea pineapples took so long to grow or used so much water.
Yes please to this trip if I make it to Maui.
I can’t imagine what it must be like tasting fresh pineapple. Was it just heaven? I’ve always shied away from these tours as I thought I’d be too hot. Great tip about the pineapple. I always thought it was strange when people turned it upside down for a few hours before cutting. Now I know why!
I to love pineapple and can only imagine how sweet and delicious a freshly picked plant would be. My mouth is watering. I had no idea it took so long for a mature plant, helps to better understand the pricing. Hope to be able to follow in your footsteps on this tour, think I would really enjoy it!