Thursday, January 06, 2005


world quality blends

so i was sitting this morning enjoying andrew's unusual yrg -- the one that smells like earl grey but has the body of an indo -- when i held the valve of one his espresso bags to my nose.

ah! delicious! this coffee has one of the most delightful scents you can imagine. (also i might be a tad delirious because for the first time in days and days i can almost smell again. . .)

this immediately reminded me of part of the conversation andrew and i had, about superpremium brazils, specialty coffees grown only for use in the highest quality espresso. (think "coffee statesman" marcelo v. here).

andrew theorized: perhaps many american roasters have an attitude that brazils are just cheap blenders, and so they don't seek out the prize-winning, best sweet & heavy coffees from the cerrado and sul minas. (but, um, andrew of course does!)

with this running around in my brain, it collided with the fact i heard from david of new zealand's atomic coffee. david independently proposed this same point.

i have remarked here before that, frankly, the best u.s.a. baristi go to the world championships and get kicked to the curb. it's no secret the scandinavians and down-under types own the top spots.

what do their specialty coffee cultures have that we need, if we want to win? well, for one thing, it might be these superpremium brazils.

but it seems like many of them aren't even available for sale here in the u.s.a. for specialty roasters to buy! without these world-quality coffees, can american specialty roasters actually make world-quality blends that will triumph on an international level?

i wonder what our roaster and barista friends think about this issue. . .

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