Tag Archives: Let’s Talk Robusta

380. Overheard at Let’s Talk Robusta 2013

2014-01-14 Comments Off on 380. Overheard at Let’s Talk Robusta 2013

Let’s Talk Robusta 2013 was by all accounts bigger and better than its predecessor.  Here are 10 of the most memorable quotes from the event.

379. Just how big is the market for fine Robusta?

2014-01-13 Comments Off on 379. Just how big is the market for fine Robusta?

Over the past two years, CRS has partnered with Sustainable Harvest to create Let’s Talk Robusta, a workshop series held during the importer’s annual Let’s Talk Coffee event.  After more than a decade of working almost exclusively in the realm of specialty Arabica, we have seen Let’s Talk Robusta as a kind of market intelligence […]

376. This is not your father’s Arabica

2013-12-17 Comments Off on 376. This is not your father’s Arabica

Manuel Díaz is an independent consultant who helped CQI create its new R standards, which aim to do for Robustas what the Q standards have done for Arabicas.  His presentation on Day Two of the 2013 edition of Let’s Talk Robusta reinforced the central appeal of the brilliant keynote delivered on Day One by Ken […]

375. Mythbusting Robusta

2013-12-10 Comments Off on 375. Mythbusting Robusta

The Coffee Review co-founder and specialty coffee pioneer Kenneth Davids opened the 2013 edition of Let’s Talk Robusta with a tour-de-force keynote address during which he exposed “The Robusta Myth” in the U.S. specialty marketplace, offered his own “Robusta realities,” and advocated forcefully for more sensory exploration of a coffee we still don’t really know.

369. Epilogue

2013-07-15 Comments Off on 369. Epilogue

The CRS Coffeelands Blog published perspectives from the intersection of coffee and international development from 2009-2013. We launched the blog because we believe that despite a quarter-century of investment and innovation to get closer to the source of our coffee, “there are still real opportunities for discovery and growth in terms of our understanding of […]

316. CRS and the great debate

2012-11-07 Comments Off on 316. CRS and the great debate

Yesterday I referred here to some recent salvoes in the escalating debate over the appropriate role for Robusta coffees in the U.S. specialty market.  Today, some reflections on our modest role in support of the fine Robusta project.

314. Robusta on the cupping table

2012-10-24 Comments Off on 314. Robusta on the cupping table

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 […]

313. Robusta: The other coffee

2012-10-23 Comments Off on 313. Robusta: The other coffee

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 […]

312. “Robusta is indeed a big deal”

2012-10-22 Comments Off on 312. “Robusta is indeed a big deal”

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 […]

307. Let’s Talk Robusta

2012-10-02 Comments Off on 307. Let’s Talk Robusta

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 […]