Mission

Specialty Coffee has it all figured out, right? Direct relationships with growers, careful roasting, baristas pulling perfect shots... we’ve squared the circle. Not exactly, as there is a final missing piece: seasonality.

Coffee is just like great fruit and vegetables. Most coffee-producing countries have only one specific harvest season each year, and once the coffee is picked from the tree, it begins the inevitable process of slow decline, losing quality with the passage of time. The result is that no matter how great a coffee tastes while in its prime, the day will always come when it loses the very things that made it so tasty in the first place.

What then does Intelligentsia In Season™ mean? It means that our coffees are offered only while they are fresh and retain the vibrancy that both nature and the fastidious coffee farmer intended. It means that the coffee offers the same kind of compelling traits it did when we first selected it and brought it to our Roasting Works. The coffee industry has long perpetuated the idea that coffee is a year-round crop without recognizing publicly that the harvest cycles do not allow for this. So you really need to know when a coffee was actually harvested. Selecting your coffees in this way ensures that you are getting them while they are their most delicious.

Criteria

Coffees designated as Intelligentsia In Season™ are less than 9 calendar months from the completion of harvest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Are Intelligentsia In Season coffees better than Intelligentsia coffees that are no longer In Season?

A: The In Season designation refers to green (unroasted) coffees that are less than 10 months from harvest. We would generally argue that a fresher green coffee results in a better tasting roasted coffee, but a coffee that is more than 10 months from harvest is not automatically lower quality. Whether or not they are In Season, all Intelligentsia coffees meet very high quality standards, and in rare cases where a coffee does not perform well in the cup, we remove it from our line-up.

Q: Why aren’t blends listed as In Season?

A: We have made a decision to apply the In Season designation to single origins only because we would like our customers to focus their attention on these coffees. Although we do not call our blends In Season, they do contain In Season single origin coffees.