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Dear Friends, First of all about coffee: We are very encouraged by the initial shipment arrivals from Central America and Mexico. For the past few years the roya...
I recently took the opportunity to interview Javier Montel Valencia, a coffee producer in Mexico whose coffee placed 12th in the 2017 Mexico Cup of Excellence (COE), where Jen Apodaca and Alex Mason participated as judges. Francisco’s winning lot was produced on a 6-acre farm located in the community of Huehuetecpan within the municipality of […]
Summer is fading fast, school is back in session, vacations are over and the workaday reality of our millstone existence stares us in the face. This is the season when the real coffee drinking begins, demand and consumption are high, yet as always it corresponds with a time of year when deliveries have ended and […]
Industry Update: Bird’s Eye View From where I sit in the Royal offices, I can see maps of several key producing countries, labelled with flowery titles: Colombia, País del Café (Country of Coffee), Guatemala, Tierra de Contrastes (Land of Contrasts), El Salvador, Rincon Mágico (Magic Corner). Much of the work we do alongside roasters involves […]
Around this time of year many roasters begin to worry if they will have enough Central American and Mexican coffee to make it till next season, or if their Sumatra is starting to taste like a musty jute sack or if their Ethiopia will start to lose its lemony luster. While those concerns are understandable, […]
In anticipation of this year’s Central American harvest, I have been reflecting on last year’s trek from Costa Rica to Mexico. From the start, the impact of leaf rust (roya) on organic coffee was foremost on my list of inquiry. One of the first visits was to Hacienda La Amistad, located in Coto Brus, a […]
