Tag Archives: Counter Culture

A simple question: Castillo or Caturra?

2015-04-09 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Yesterday I had the honor to present the preliminary results of the Colombia Sensory Trial at the 2015 SCAA Symposium. The Colombia Sensory Trial is a cross-sector collaboration with allies in the research community (the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Kansas State University and World Coffee Research), industry (Counter Culture, Federación Nacional de Cafeteros, George […]

449. La Florida: Meet the growers

2015-02-20 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Since early this morning, members of the 33 families who grew the coffee in Counter Culture’s La Florida single-variety Caturra lot have been gathered in Pasto, the capital of Nariño. They are waiting until 3:12 pm local time, when their coffee takes center stage in the able hands of Anna Utevsky. Meet some of them […]

448. USBC preview: Anna Utevsky and intentionality

2015-02-19 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

The U.S. Barista Championship gets underway tomorrow in Long Beach. The live broadcast of the competition will reach viewers in a place not accustomed to watching barista events. I’m not talking about Las Vegas, North Carolina. Or Holland, Michigan. Or even Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I am talking about Nariño, Colombia, where the farmers who grew Anna […]

446. Counter Culture rolls out single-farm Borderlands lots

2015-02-03 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Last month, Counter Culture introduced this single-variety community lot from La Florida. This month, it rolls out a series of more than one dozen single-farm lots from the same region of Nariño. .

442. Counter Culture presents single-variety Borderlands lot from La Florida

2015-01-08 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

In Nariño, Colombia, we have been working for more than three years to build relationships between the 1,600 smallholder growers who participate in our Borderlands Coffee Project and six allies in the marketplace who are part of the project’s Advisory Council. This year, four of those companies purchased 41 separate lots from 324 different growers, […]

441. Getting by with a little help from our friends: The Borderlands Advisory Council

2015-01-07 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Today: how representatives of six leading specialty coffee companies who share our commitment to transform the coffee chain in Nariño, Colombia, are helping us create opportunities for smallholder farmers and developing new sources of extraordinary coffee.

440. Revisiting our 2014 New Year’s resolutions

2015-01-06 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

A year ago we made three New Year’s resolutions on this blog: Generate more results-based evidence. Help the coffee sector navigate uncharted waters. Borrow a page from the microfinance playbook. Today we revisit those resolutions to see how we did on each one in 2014.

439. The best of Coffeelands: 2014 in review

2014-12-30 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

The CRS Coffeelands Blog turned five in November. Here is the content from the blog’s fifth year that you, the readers, liked the best. Or rather, it is is the content you read the most, since in some cases you did not care too much for what I had to say.

438. The CRS Colombian Varietal Cuppings series adjourns (for now)

2014-12-17 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Over the past six weeks, this blog has been devoted exclusively to the CRS Colombian Varietal Cuppings–a series of comparative cuppings of Castillo and Caturra samples from our Borderlands project involving leading roasters and importers in the United States, Europe and Australia. Even when I took a week off from reporting on the results of […]

434. The variety play (and the future of Caturra)

2014-11-24 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

We interrupt our series on of interviews on the CRS Colombian Varietal Cuppings to bring you an important reflection on the future of Caturra. Are its days numbered?