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:
As I write this, I am on a quick train ride out of Manhattan. My travel schedule for today and the next eight days will have me in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Sonoma County, and San Francisco. It requires many meetings, being “on” frequently, and the inevitably late nights and early mornings.
On August 13th, Intelligentsia participated in the Taste of the Nation Event held here in Chicago. Taste of the Nation is actually a series of events held around the country and hosted by a charitable group called Share Our Strength. The goal of Share our Strength is to raise enough awareness and money to end childhood hunger in the US by 2015.
There was a ride at my childhood park. I believe it was a merry-go-round. You'd hop on and your sibling would spin and spin and spin with all their might. The world would rush past, swirling colors and trees, the ground would shift, your ears would ring and your tummy would navigate upwards into your chest.
I am the National Sales Manager for Intelligentsia and my team sells coffee to restaurants, coffeebars, and hotels. On Monday I made my annual visit to the National Restaurant Association Show.
"On the brink" is a place I'm not much good at. I cannot stand limbo and would prefer to just get on with things. Most often this has served me well, but occasionally it can get me into trouble.
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.
Almost all of the builds for our Central American coffees have been solidified this year. From what I know of previous years, this is the fastest it has ever come together. I’ve enjoyed tasting these coffees; the freshness, the snap and character are all unrivaled when a coffee is just out of harvest. Any lemon note is juicier, plum note deeper, chocolate note sustained.
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.
The snow is pouring down outside our offices in Chicago right now. Heaps of the stuff. It is very pretty, despite the knowledge that it will make getting home later today a slow and grip-less proposition. And speaking of grip-less propositions, I want to let you know that I've managed to invent a new word this week: cementify.
