I'm here in Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia. I arrived on Sunday evening, after spending a week in Kenya visiting the farmers of the Gikanda and Thiriku cooperatives in Nyeri and attending the 10th annual EAFCA (East African Fine Coffee Association) conference in Mombasa.
After providing a state of the state in Specialty Coffee for the upcoming decade in my previous blog post, I thought that a 2009 Intelligentsia recap was in order.
A new decade is arrived. Are you ready for it? Is the world of Specialty Coffee ready for it?
Just to help ease the transition I put together a little list of things to look forward to in coffee, along with some things I hope get left behind as artifacts, as we flip the pages of the calendar.
Things I hope become historical footnotes:
It's my first time in the Land of Oz. I'm quite happy to have come here, and it's not just because of the fuzzy koalas, the Jocko memorabilia, or the vegemite sandwiches. The Aussies have been making a lot of noise in recent years within the Specialty Coffee industry and the opportunity to have a first-hand look at what's going on was too hard to pass up.
Since my last writing, I've been back and forth from Central America a couple times, attended the Specialty Coffee Association of America show, and spent two weeks in Africa. I am currently attending the Cup of Excellence competition in Nicaragua.
I rolled into Butare last night after spending four days in Kigali for the EAFCA (East African Fine Coffee Association) conference. It's an event designed to bring together all of the quality-focused producers, marketers, roasters, and other coffee-type people who do work in East African countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Burundi.
I spend most of last week traveling around Colombia with the now world-famous barista Stephen Morrissey, and I liked it. Not in a Kate Perry kind of way, but rather in a manner that reminded me how important it is that buyers, roasters, and baristas understand that they are mutually interdependent.
Earlier this week we held an event at our Roasting Works that was designed to explore the ways in which different brewing methods impact coffee taste. It was pretty rockin'. The entire Chicago staff came out and we spent a couple hours playing around with three coffees: Los Inmortales, El Salvador Micro-Lot: Finca Matalapa; Kurimi, Ethiopia Yirgacheffe; and our 2008 Celebration Blend.
I'm in Bogota, Colombia enjoying some time with friends and seeking to loosen up and disengage whatever stress barnacles managed to build up over 2008.
I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and may I be one of the first to wish you happy holidays and/or season's greetings. That second one seems to fit nicely, as this week's Nod is going to discuss seasonality and how it relates to coffee.
I've got a front row seat at the Tanzanian Coffee Auction here in Moshi. Like the Kenyan auctions, this gathering takes place throughout the harvesting season. In Tanzania it occurs every Thursday at the Kahawa House.
