October Article: HarVee Award Winners

For our October article we will report on the results of a competition among roasters at the interesting Let’s Talk Coffee event coming up in Panama October 9-12. As a result, our October tasting article will be published on Monday, October 20.

Let’s Talk Coffee is a long-running annual event sponsored by coffee exporter/importer Sustainable Harvest. It attracts several hundred coffee producers, roasters and coffee development people every year, and takes place in various coffee growing regions. Recent Let’s Talk Coffee events have taken place in Peru, El Salvador and Tanzania, for example. Let’s Talk offers a wide range of speakers and presentations, and provides an unusual opportunity to interact and socialize with a very range of “stake-holders in the specialty coffee supply chain,” industry jargon for all of the people in all of the places in the world that in various ways make their living growing, milling, exporting, importing, roasting and distributing specialty coffee, as well as those involved in non-profit organizations that are attempting to improve coffee quality, ameliorate poverty, and improve the environment in coffee-growing regions.

One of the latest additions to the Let’s Talk Coffee program is the HarVee Awards, a serious yet slightly tongue-in-cheek awards ceremony. Everyone is encouraged to “dress formally” for the evening event, which recommendation, of course, is subject to a wide variety of interpretations, some rather creative. Until this year the main awards were to coffee producers for highest quality green coffees as judged by a professional panel.

For this year Let’s Talk Coffee HarVee ceremony organizer David Griswold decided to add a set of awards for roasters as well as producers. These awards will be given to roasters for the best presentation of coffees sold (as green coffee) by Sustainable Harvest. Coffee Review was asked to provide the judging for these coffees, and I will present the winners at the HarVee awards ceremony in Panama on October 9.

It turned out that the submitted samples represented a very rich and interesting cross-section of current North American specialty coffee offerings, ranging from two startlingly fine coffees that we rated 95, to other, somewhat lower-rated but still very worthy and interesting samples, all from a wide variety of origins roasted in a variety of styles.

Our October story, scheduled to appear on or around October 16, will discuss the event and, above all, the coffees that won awards. We will review thirteen of these coffees and talk about some of the interesting issues in green coffee style and roasting they provoked.

Please visit Coffee Review on October 16 and read our story and reviews from this engaging event.