Earlier this month in Colombia, we worked with Sustainable Harvest to stage an event-within-an-event during its annual Let’s Talk Coffee gathering. Our event, which focused on “the other coffee,” was a three-part program called “Let’s Talk Robusta” that culminated in a fine Robusta cupping led by the great Sunalini Menon. Video coverage of the cupping […]
Last October, I wrote the R-word on this blog for the first time. I was explaining our collaboration with smallholder farmers in Ecuador’s northern Amazon region to explore the emerging market for specialty Robusta coffees. It took us more than a year to re-engage publicly with the idea of fine Robusta, but we think it […]
A lot has been said already in social media about “Let’s Talk Robusta,” a three-part program we sponsored as part of Sustainable Harvest‘s 10th annual Let’s Talk Coffee event earlier this month in Colombia. I will share more in the coming days about the event, and I am confident that the contested concept of fine […]
I have been so busy preparing for and participating in Sustainable Harvest’s 10th annual Let’s Talk Coffee in Colombia last week that I am just getting caught up on some recent news in coffee. Here are some of the biggest stories in specialty coffee from the last month.
I am in Colombia this week with 20 CRS colleagues, partners and project participants from Latin America and the Caribbean to participate in Let’s Talk Coffee, the innovative value chain event that Sustainable Harvest created 10 years ago. I see lots of opportunities for learning in the event’s exciting agenda, which includes a wide range […]
Today I travel to Medellín with 20 CRS colleagues, partners and project participants from Colombia, Ecuador and Haiti for Let’s Talk Coffee – the annual coffee value chain event that Sustainable Harvest created 10 years ago. The first Let’s Talk Coffee was a groundbreaking innovation, creating an annual space for face-to-face communications among farmer organizations […]
During this year’s SCAA Symposium and Expo, and the inevitable slate of follow-up calls the week after, the issue of size kept coming up in my conversations. There was the roaster that bemoaned how small it was, wishing it could do more to meet the demands of its partners. There was the roaster that felt […]
The 2012 edition of the SCAA Expo proved that nice guys don’t always finish last — among the event’s big winners were some of the nicest guys in coffee.
As usual, this year’s SCAA was a blur, with great coffee from the country’s best roasters and baristas fueling long days and late nights punctuated by lots of thought-provoking discussions. It always takes me a few weeks to really digest all the discussions from SCAA and understand their implications for my work here in the […]
Counter Culture Coffee Buyer and Sustainability Manager Kim Elena Ionescu was scheduled to present the company’s brilliant case study on the social impact of microlots to the 2012 SCAA Expo today. She was unable to attend, so Counter Culture’s Coffee Director Peter Giuliano stood in for her — arguably one of the more notable understudies […]
