You can only cup the table in front of you: the role of the comparator

This year's World of Coffee show was epic. Great Coffee, Great People, Great Times had by all! What's not to love? Ben Palmer re-caps.

Mercanta has participated in the Cup of Excellence programme from the very beginning, 20 years ago. We ask: is the competition still relevant? Juan Cano reports.

2017 marked the second year of Mercanta’s Jantioquia (January in Antioquia) – an event inspired by my own experiences in Antioquia some years ago. When I first began visiting Antioquia in 2010, the department (Colombia’s largest administrative subdivision) had long been overlooked with regards to both coffee and tourism. At the time, Huila held distinction

Grant Rattray and Leah Warren visit Papua New Guinea and tell us about their search for quality green coffee in this unique origin.

Pedro Echavarria and Leonardo Hennao from Antioquia's Santa Barbara Estate joined us in the UK, visiting friends and talking about FERMENTATION!

Mercanta celebrated our 20th anniversary in style during this year's SCAE World of Coffee show in Dublin.

On May 16-20, Mercanta North America’s John Curry attended the 2016 Guatemala Cup of Excellence (COE) International Jury as an observer. He shares his experiences.

Mercanta's ability to link and create relationships between producers and roasters highlighted and praised by Sustainable Restaurant Association

Mercanta Medellin's Juan Cano recounts his recent visit to the Antioquia's Best Cup prizewinning La Falda del Centro.

Mercanta kicked off the beginning of 2016 by celebrating with our friends and partners in Colombia! For the month of January, Stephen Hurst and many other Mercanta staff welcomed friends from around the world to Antioquia and Huila to better know this beautiful country that is home to some of the world's finest coffees.

We are glad to launch Mercanta of the Americas, formerly known as Mercanta Central America. This much expanded operation will be overseen by Christian Schaps, who will be responsible for looking after a number of origins in the region. The aim of MoA is to make it more accessible to search for fine coffees as

We recently welcomed Túlio Henrique Rennó Junqueira from Carmo Estate to talk about his farm, production and life in the coffee family. For those that were lucky enough to join us on the day, there was the fascinating opportunity to question Tulio on all aspect of production and export. If you couldn’t join us, watch

Last Friday there was much excitement in the office as we became the proud possessors of ‘Mercanta’ engraved cupping spoons. As eager as we were to test them out straight away, we knew they would benefit in the long run from a little tempering. Although the need to season a roaster is widely accepted in

On Friday 23rd November we held our first off site invitational cupping day at one of the UK’s leading specialist coffee shops, Colonna & Small’s in Bath. We had a great turnout from roasters based in the South West and I’m sure that everyone enjoyed this opportunity to put faces to names and companies. We

1850km in a 1 litre Fiat Uno; Brazil is nothing if not huge. Starting in Sao Paulo, this trip took me to Pedregulho on the Sao Paulo/Minas Gerais border, then Pocos de Caldas, Santo Antonio do Amparo, Areado in Minas Gerais, then back to Pocos and finally Sao Paulo. Two weeks, dozens of farms, cupping

Thank you to everyone who joined us at our UK lab for a fantastic afternoon of cupping last Friday. We had a great time and really appreciated all the feedback from the group. It was a busy afternoon – a group of over ten of us cupped a total of 36 coffees, across three tables.

This season we have started working with producers in two upcoming growing regions with great potential for specialty lots – Honduras in Central America and Antioquia in Colombia. We are very excited about these new projects and look forward to sharing our latest finds. Honduras isn’t strictly a new origin for us. We have brought

Mercanta’s team in Seattle are very excited about their brand new cupping table! We can’t wait to host our first cupping day for our North American customers. The custom built table top was installed this week, meaning that our new lab and office in central Seattle is finally complete! We have the same table in

We are very excited to announce that Mercanta North America has recently moved into a new office space in central Seattle – equipped with a custom-built cupping lab of course! We shipped our very first container of specialty coffee direct from origin to North America in 2006, after a decade of sourcing and importing some