The Royal Blog

There is a wealth of diversity in the way people prepare and consume coffee around the world. The cultural exchange that comes out of international interaction, and especially out of colonization, creates new traditions like Café de Olla, a Mexican beverage I’ve written about previously. These new traditions take snippets of the participating cultures’ culinary […]

Editors note: A version of this article first appeared as a two-part series in Barista Magazine Online on August 7 and August 14, 2018. For a limited time, you can enjoy our version of this beverage at The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room Café de Olla: Native to Mestizo Mexico In many places, […]

A note from Mayra: One of my dreams is to see more people from origin working on the other side of the supply chain. People who were raised in coffee communities are often the best advocates for their coffee once it arrives in the United States. I am pleased to interview Rosalba Cifuentes Tovia, who […]

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 fungus has certainly compromised many of our favorite suppliers. We are now cupping some outstanding coffees, in particular from Huehuetenago, and Chiapas, Mexico – two […]

I love espresso. There’s nothing quite so delightful as pulling a shot, tasting it, making small adjustments, and eventually watching the beautiful tiger stripes of a perfect dial. It’s such a pleasingly tactile experience, and for someone who’s spent years behind a humming, hot espresso machine, there’s a certain comfort in returning to movements that […]

Staff Picks! Sometimes we get excited around the cupping table, and one particular coffee stands out to us. We’re sure we aren’t alone in this – there’s always that coffee that just fits. Taste in coffee is unapologetically subjective. There are some coffees we can all agree upon as being special, and for the Royal Trading […]

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 […]