Exploring the world of coffee origins

Every bag we open started somewhere specific: a slope, an altitude, a family that decided which day to pick. Two beans of the same variety grown four hundred metres apart taste different, and once you have tasted that difference side by side it is very hard to go back to thinking of coffee as one flavour.

Altitude does most of the work

Higher and cooler means the cherry ripens slowly, and slow ripening concentrates sugars and acids. That is why our Ethiopian lots taste like stone fruit and bergamot while a low-grown Brazilian tastes like toasted nuts and chocolate. Neither is better. They are answers to different questions.

What we buy, and why

We buy small lots, usually a single farm or a single washing station, and we buy them twice a year so the coffee on the bar is never more than a few months off harvest. It costs more per kilo than a year-round blend. It also means the espresso in March genuinely does not taste like the espresso in September, which we think is the point.

Ask whoever is on bar what is open. They will pour you a taste before you commit to a cup.