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We select only the finest fair-trade, Rain Forest Alliance, green arabica coffee beans from the top 1% of producers awarded the prestigious Cup of Excellence honor and we roast the beans to perfection, locally, in Clear Lake, Iowa. 

The first attempt at planting coffee failed due to flooding, but Hendrick Zwaardecroon, an ambitious and agriculturally minded employee of the VOC, tried again in 1699 and the plantings were successful. By the time H.Z. retired as Governor-General of the VOC in 1725, over 1 million pounds of coffee from Java were being sold annually at auction in Amsterdam. The volume would increase to 2.5 million pounds by the end of that decade and over 5 million pounds a year by 1780.

This continues, your appetizer, for a long time that you do not know how to measure, until that beautiful moment when their inability to speak or lift their cups anymore coincides with the zenith of your giddy anticipation. They have fallen to the floor, but you continue to pour coffee into their mouths to watch the temporary relief bloom on their faces.

The bishop’s servant was so impressed with the Moscato wine in the town of Montefiascone, Italy, that he wrote on the door of the inn with great enthusiasm, “Est! Est!! Est!!!,” an appellation that remains attached to the wine of that region even now. It seems the servant knew his master’s tastes well. Bishop Fugger was so enthralled with the wine that he remained in Montefiascone and kept drinking. He drank himself to death. From the stuporous fog of his last moments on earth, with his final breath it is said, he asked that his great wealth be left in trust and that every year, on the anniversary of his death, a barrel of Moscato be poured over his grave.

Prior to the emergence of the specialty coffee industry (aka, “the enlightenment”), coffee snobbishness was not unknown, but practitioners were few and far between, usually found in metropolitan areas clustered around small roasting companies that had survived industry consolidation because they were family businesses. These snooty coffee enclaves grew exponentially with the rise of specialty coffee and today almost everyone can claim a handful of coffee elitists just within their immediate circle of friends and family.

Currently, interesting times are stacked on top of interesting times as the shipping industry is experiencing shortages of containers and truck drivers. Planning is a challenge for everyone in the supply chain. Suffice to say, whatever your timelines for ordering have been in the past, back them up to … well, to now. In addition to some challenging uncertainty in road shipping, all green coffee suppliers are experiencing low spot inventories compared to “normal” years, which means coffee that is here today might not be here tomorrow.

Current estimates of losses to the 2022/23 crop due to the frost events in July of this year range from 4-11%, or 3-7 million bags against a potential crop of 68 million bags . Not surprisingly, lower estimates come from analysis on the consumption side of coffee and higher estimates come from various sources on the production side of coffee. Is it the worst frost in 27 years or the worst frost in 21 years? Well, it depends on who you ask. Do we listen to the farmers, Brazilian officials, traders in New York, the commodity press, everyone with an opinion? Or as one analyst puts it, do we “talk to the trees,” meaning careful and comprehensive assessments of the damage on the ground, which takes time, more time than has yet to pass? At this point, much still depends on the decisions producers make following the arrival of rain (or the non-arrival), primarily decisions about pruning.

It’s important to understand that there is a difference between aged coffee and old coffee. Coffee is aged with intention and, when done right, with care. Even 100 years ago, coffees aged under certain conditions were prized over coffee that had just simply been around for a while.