Planadas means plains in Spanish. It is an ironic name for the place where this coffee is grown, since there is very little level ground in Planadas beyond the small mesa that is home to its quaint downtown and the modest landing strip that serves as its airport. In every direction as you move out of town, the rugged terrain rises and falls in this stunning stretch of the Colombian Andes, where conditions for coffee-growing are optimal.

There is no other coffee competition that comes close to the rigor of a Cup of Excellence. Every coffee that reaches the finals goes through a minimum of five rounds of evaluation by national and international juries made up of some of more than three dozen of the most discriminating coffee tasters in the world. Hundreds of cups of every sample are tasted, and even a single defect can be cause for elimination. It is extremely hard to win a CoE.

Buy Rwanda People’s Farm here. DIRECT TRADE PARTNERKivubelt CoffeePeople’s Farm REGIONMurundo, Western Province CULTIVARBourbon ELEVATION1700-1900 m HARVESTApril-May 2021 LOOK FORDried Cherry | Navel Orange | Cola The washing station model often trades transparency and traceability for efficiency and scale. When a single washing station commonly…

At Finca El Porvenir, vigorous and healthy-looking coffee plants line the edge of a canyon, planted with plenty of space between them so that they can stretch and breathe. Plentiful ground cover protects the soil from the sun, with small drip irrigation lines providing a lifeline to water when needed. Butterflies and bees, our world’s most important pollinators, are everywhere doing their thing.

Finca El Acerillo is a small farm at a soaring elevation in San Ignacio, the region from which we have sourced more single-origins than anywhere else in Peru. This is the first single-origin lot we have purchased from El Acerillo.

This one comes from the El Cabuyal farm of Jaime Sánchez Ledezma in Sotará, Cauca. Since 2016, we have been working there with a growing group of smallholder farmers in partnership with our friends at Banexport, who have been actively facilitating the spread of Pink Bourbon.

is time of year, birdsong fills the air, buds appear overnight on tree branches, and the first green shoots push up through the ground — tell-tales signs of spring that fill us with a sense of renewal and hope. And this time every year, we release our Persephone blend to mark the occasion.

Buesaco, Nariño, is well on its way to earning grand cru status in Colombian coffee.  Over the last decade, it has emerged as one of the most popular sources of extreme quality in the country.  Thanks to its dominance in the national Cup of Excellence quality competitions and word-of-mouth among exporters and buyers, it has surged into prominence and developed a reputation as one of the best places to look for bright, complex coffees. 

This lot was a revelation for our coffee team — a variety we have never tasted from a region where we have never sourced in an origin that hasn’t been on our menu in more than five years.

It would be fair to call Ecuador an emerging specialty coffee origin, but it would also be fair to say that it has taken its time in emerging.

Introducing our new Instant Espresso Black Cat Classic! Buy Instant Espresso Black Cat Classic here. A new freeze-dried instant coffee with notes of dark chocolate, raw sugar and marshmallow based on our best-selling signature espresso blend. Simply pour the instant espresso into your cup, add…

Buy Burundi Yandaro here. DIRECT TRADE PARTNERGreencoYandaro coffee washing station REGIONKayanza CULTIVARBourbon ELEVATION1850 m HARVESTMay-July 2021 LOOK FORBrown Sugar | Orange | Dried Cherry The global coffee market may not rely on Burundi, but Burundi relies on the world coffee market. Burundi produces barely one-tenth…