NPR: Coffee Is The New Wine

 
NPR ran a nice piece yesterday featuring Peter Giuliano (who recently departed from Counter Culture) and Allie Caran, who opened Artifact Coffee in Baltimore this summer, that highlights specialty coffee’s focus on coffee quality and its diverse flavors.

Increasingly, specialty roasters are working directly with coffee growers around the world to produce coffees as varied in taste as wines. And how are roasters teaching their clientele to appreciate the subtle characteristics of brews? By bringing an age-old tasting ritual once limited to coffee insiders to the coffee-sipping masses.

The writer, Allison Aubrey, visited a cupping at Artifact to learn about tasting the flavor nuances in coffee and some of the characteristics that help them develop.

Listen to the full story on NPR

The drug we love

People who love coffee consider it more than just a drink. It’s part ritual, part pick-me-up, part habit.

“It sort of gives me a lift,” says long-long-longtime coffee drinker Rich Warwinsky. “And if I manage it well and drink it two or three times a day, half and half, I’m not too crazed.”

With this description, it sounds as if Warwinsky is referring to a drug habit. And in fact, he is.

“Coffee: A little really does go a long way.” on NPR