The coffee you should be drinking now is a culmination of a lot of care and hard work. Right from the start, it’s all about not buggering it up: We start with the potential the farmer plants and the rest of the chain is about preventing the loss of that potential. The farmer needs to care enough to plant a good varietal in good conditions and work hard selecting and grading the coffee and getting it processed properly. The exporter needs to care enough to pay double, triple, quadruple fairtrade minimum and to store and ship the coffee well. The roaster needs to try and test over and over again to get the best out of the beans. The barista has to try and test and re-try the preparation method for the coffee and then if we’re not getting what we want, we have to go back up the chain to find out where we buggered up.

What is it that we’re looking for? Everyone has their own idea about what makes a good coffee. Some people even add sugar to their brew. Less diplomatic aficionados than ourselves might say that the way most coffee is roasted means sugar is needed.
We want a coffee that tastes good on its own, raw, naked, beautiful in its simplicity, complex in its character. For us, the best coffee flavours are the most delicate. These are the most volatile aromatics in coffee: the flowery, fruity notes; the hints of jasmine, sweet pea, strawberry, lilac, bergamot. We can only get these from well-grown, harvested, processed, shipped, stored, unadulterated mollycoddled beans. It’s also neigh impossible to get these through the espresso machine. The next best volatiles are the nutty, dried fruit, chocolaty, caramel flavours. This bunch come from the roast, if our baristas can’t get it, they can blame the roaster. And then the roaster blames them.