In my last Coffeelands post, as part of our tribute to the International Year of Soils, I promised to seek out experts in the area of soil management and coffee production and to share their invaluable insights with you. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far. My colleague, Luis Álvarez Welchez, knows soil and coffee. […]
When you think of UN resolutions (if you ever spend time thinking of UN resolutions that is), what probably comes to mind are some of the world’s most intractable conflicts, such as Syria, Iraq or the Congo. The UN, however, can also use these resolutions in order to educate the global public. This was the […]
Yesterday SCAA Symposium organizers posted a video of my presentation “A Simple Question: Castillo or Caturra?” Watch it in its entirety here. .
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.
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 […]
Today I interview Adam McClellan, green coffee buyer for the iconic Portland-based roaster Stumptown, as we resume our series of conversations with specialty coffee tastemakers regarding their participation in our Colombian Varietal Cuppings. In September, together with Stumptown’s head roaster and quality control manager, Adam cupped sample pairs from 10 farms in Nariño participating in our […]
Counter Culture Coffee is a roaster that needs no introduction. Its innovations in coffee sourcing, quality and sustainability have outsized influence in the coffee industry. Counter Culture is, in short, a tastemaker. And Counter Culture likes Caturra. A lot. As part of the CRS Colombian Varietal Cuppings, Counter Culture’s QC Director Timothy Hill cupped 22 […]
Readers of this blog will know that we have partered with World Coffee Research (WCR) and some of the brightest lights in specialty coffee, research and philanthropy on the Colombia Sensory Trial–a side-by-side sensory comparison of Castillo- and Caturra-variety coffee samples taken from farms in Colombia growing, harvesting and processing both under virtually identical conditions. […]
CRS is seeking coffee professionals for ongoing projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia and Uganda. DRC. CRS is continuing to search for a Chief of Party to lead the Bora Ya Kivu Specialty Coffee Program in the Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The project, funded jointly by the […]
When we published our 2014 New Year’s resolutions back in January, at the top of the list was this: “enlist industry leaders and research institutes in a comparative cupping of two leading Colombian coffee varieties, Castillo and Caturra.” That public commitment set off nine months of frenetic activity during which we collaborated with the International […]
