Since our involvement in the coffee business in Ireland since the mid 2000’s coffee consumption has been steadily rising along with the number of outlets selling coffee. The variety of coffee styles is very apparent now too. No longer is coffee just good or bad; it’s an opinions business, where different origins and roasting techniques give huge variation to the flavour.
Coffee in the global village
Soaring global coffee consumption is good news for the economies of the countries reliant on the trade, also known as origins. In a growing market where there is huge demand for new flavours. Coffee origins are key to flavour profiles and have become distinct in their own right, similar to that of wine producing regions. This has allowed many smaller producers, like Charles Mutwiri, who produces the single origin beans for our Green Ocean Dorinish coffee, gain an international foothold enabling them to sell direct to businesses like ourselves. Selling directly allows producers to bypass the commodification of their harvest in the futures markets and coffee bean dealers of the stock exchange. We have labelled this process ‘Direct from Farm’. There is a clear line from the farm to the cup which improves transparency and providence as well as giving farmers like Charles Mutwiri visibility on future orders which is key for him in making investment decisions. Our focus with ‘Direct from Farm’ is to support developing communities by proving opportunity for them to grow and prosper.
What is coffee?
A coffee bean comes from inside a coffee cherry, which grow on coffee trees from a region of the world known as the coffee belt (between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn). We use Arabica coffee beans in all of our Woodland Coffee and Green Ocean Coffee brands. Arabica coffee beans originate from Ethiopia and accounts for over 60% of the world’s coffee. Usually grown at higher altitudes and in mountainous areas under a variety of different conditions like shade / partial sunlight etc which impact the flavour of the coffee. Much like wine, coffee flavours reflect their ‘terroir’ of climate, soil type and geomorphology.
What makes some coffee stand out?
Once the coffee cherries are harvested (when they turn bright red) they are dried and graded. As you would expect, grading is critical to the blending and roasting process and is carried out with reference to the SCA (Specialty Coffee Association) rules. Once a coffee achieves a grade of 80 or above, it is categorised as speciality grade arabica. Both Green Ocean and Woodland Coffee are all specialty grade, and this has been a key reason why we won 3 out of the 6 prizes in the two coffee categories at last year’s Blas na hEireann Irish Food Awards.
Woodland and Green Ocean Coffee
Each of the coffees in the Woodland and Green Ocean ranges offers difference, the flavours are contemporary, balanced and nuanced. Roasted in Ireland, all of our coffees proudly carry the ‘Guaranteed Irish’ logo and both Woodland and Green Ocean fund real environmental projects here in Ireland which deliver long term measurable benefits in terms of carbon sequestration and biodiversity improvement on land and in our coastal seas.
If you fancy finding out a bit more about our award-winning coffee that makes the world we live in a better place, then please get in touch!
More about Woodland Coffee here
More about Green Ocean Coffee here