Ethiopia Trip Report

A big thank you to everyone who came to see us at our stand at the SCAE World of Coffee in Vienna last week. We really enjoyed the show – and the nail-biting WBC, World Brewers Cup and World Cup Tasters finals of course! It was fantastic to see another WBC winner from an origin

This May I was lucky enough to be accepted as part of the International Jury for the Guatemala Cup of Excellence 2012. Needless to say I was very excited to spend a week cupping some of the season’s best coffees from this fantastic origin country. We arrived in Guatemala City on the Sunday evening and

At the end of May I was back in Rwanda to visit our suppliers and do some cupping ahead of this year’s crop. As ever I was blown away by the hospitality of my hosts and the beauty of this fantastically green country. The washing stations that we work with are based in the north,

Mercanta was delighted to attend the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) event in Portland last week. This was our first time exhibiting at the show and we had an excellent few days meeting friends old and new. Our booth was staffed by our Mercanta North America team of Leah and Katherine (Hartline), who are

At the beginning of March I travelled more than 2500km around Brazil’s coffee heartlands of South Minas and the Cerrado – an excellent reminder of how huge Brazil is! Many of the Brazilian states (such as Minas Gerais) are the size of entire European countrie. First, some facts and figures… Brazil anticipated crop 2012 harvest

Although Mercanta is not in the commodity business, we, and everyone involved in the green unroasted coffee business, are in some way affected by/connected to the ”commodity price” as quoted on the New York and London exchanges. The commodity price for coffee is a topic of endless debate, frequently misunderstood, and dare I say it,

Despite having de-commoditised the specialty coffee business many years ago, Mercanta does not exist in a vacuum. Events in the wider commodity coffee world are coming to visit the specialty coffee world, and they are coming quickly. Commodity coffee prices at $2.50/lb are the highest in 13 years. This, in itself, is a newsworthy item.

We have just been sent some photos of the damage caused in Guatemala by weeks of heavy rain, as a series of tropical storms batter Central America. Meanwhile El Salvador is forecasting losses of between 7 and 20% of its national coffee production in 2011/12. According to the Red Cross, in Guatemala more than 470,000

More than a million people have been affected by devastating tropical storms in Central America and Mexico in recent weeks. Over twelve days of torrential rain have caused landslides and serious floods, with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua hit particularly hard. Needless to say many coffee producers have been affected – damage caused by

This year’s coffee hunter field trip headed to colourful Bahia in northern Brazil – a diverse and sometimes overlooked growing area, with some huge potential for distinctive specialty lots. We were lucky to take a talented cameraman with us, who made this film of the week – we hope it will help show what Mercanta

We’re excited to learn that our independent sister company, London School of Coffee (LSC), is now offering two modules from the SCAE’s brand new Coffee Diploma. LSC trainer and coffee industry veteran, John Thompson, will be teaching Green Coffee and Sensory Cup Tasting at LSC from September. About the Diploma Launched in June 2011, the

Farmers in East Africa are enduring an extremely tough year. Michael Gehrken, who farms Blackburn Estate in Tanzania, recently sent us an update on the challenges he is facing as the new crop starts coming in. It’s a vivid reminder of how much hard graft goes into producing the fine coffees we source. The severe

It seems the specialty coffee revolution is spreading further than we thought possible! Despite snow, sub-zero temperatures and a real lack of local cafés, the team at South Africa’s base in Antarctica are enjoying some very fine coffees this winter. Thanks to Cape Town based specialty roaster, Origin Coffee Roasting, some of Mercanta’s coffees have

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

I recently spent an unforgettable few days in Rwanda visiting Mercanta’s partners ahead of the new crop. This was my first visit to this tiny and very green Central African country – and I was encouraged to see how specialty coffee is helping to channel much-needed funds into its rural communities. ‘The land of a

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

On my recent visit to Blackburn Estate in Tanzania I was delighted to visit the nearby primary school in Mangola Juu village. In partnership with South African roaster Origin Coffee Roasting and with the assistance of Blackburn’s owner Michael Gehrken, Mercanta has sponsored repairs and building materials for the school. The school’s headmaster, Peter Genda, showed

In February I was lucky to have the chance to attend the annual East African Fine Coffees Association (EAFCA) conference, close to Arusha in northern Tanzania. This was my first trip to origin for Mercanta so I was very excited to get going – if a little unsure of what to expect. Needless to say,

While in Tanzania for the EAFCA conference I took the opportunity to visit Michael and Tina Gehrken at Blackburn Estate. This extraordinary farm is perched high on the slopes of the Ngorongoro Crater – reached from Arusha via a vertiginous ascent of the Rift Valley wall and a final spine-jarring half hour along a dirt