High quality beans

The Specialty Coffee Association is a non-profit, membership-based body that brings together growers, exporters, importers, roasters, baristas and equipment makers. It exists so that a producer in Quindío and a buyer in Melbourne can describe the same coffee in the same terms.

Its most visible work is the protocols: how a green sample is graded for defects, how it is roasted for evaluation, how it is brewed for cupping, and how a panel of trained graders scores what is in the cup. The result is a number on a 100-point scale, produced by a repeatable method rather than by preference. Coffee that scores 80 points or more is what the industry calls specialty.

Specialty is not a marketing adjective. It is a threshold, and it is earned lot by lot: the green has to be free of primary defects, screened for size, cupped to protocol and scored by graders who are trained and calibrated for the job.

Reaching it is the sum of a lot of small decisions. Planting the right varietal at the right altitude. Picking only ripe cherries, which means going through the same tree several times in a harvest. Controlling the fermentation and the drying. Storing the green well. Roasting to reveal what is there rather than to cover it.

It also means the coffee can be described honestly. A specialty lot arrives with a record: where it grew, who grew it, how it was processed and how it scored.

Two species account for almost all the coffee traded in the world: Coffea arabica, and Coffea canephora, which the trade calls Robusta. They are not two grades of the same thing. They are different plants, grown in different conditions, and they taste different.

Arabica grows at higher altitudes in cooler climates. The cherry matures slowly, and much of its sweetness, aromatic complexity and clean acidity comes from that slow ripening. It is also the more delicate plant: more exposed to disease, and more demanding of shade, altitude and care.

Robusta is hardier. It tolerates heat, lower altitudes and a wider range of soils, yields more per tree and carries noticeably more caffeine. In the cup it is heavier in body, more bitter and less aromatic, which is why it dominates instant coffee and low-cost blends, and why some espresso blends use a little of it for body and crema.

Colombia grows Arabica. The Federación Nacional de Cafeteros standard our brands work to is built entirely around it.

A single-origin coffee comes from one identified place - a region, a municipality, a farm or a defined group of producers - and from one harvest. That single fact is what makes the other claims on this page possible.

Traceability, because a name can be checked. Quality, because the lot is judged on its own merits instead of being averaged into a blend built to a price. Consistency, because the same land, the same varietals and the same producers come back season after season, so you can buy the same coffee again.

And authenticity: what you taste is a place, not a recipe assembled to hit a number. Blends are a craft of their own and we have nothing against them, but the claim we make is about knowing exactly where a coffee came from.