Five Senses' Blog

Real Direct Trade

By shaughan @ Friday, June 25th, 2010
Origin Trips — 2 Comments - Add Your Comment

Direct trade has got to be one of the most compromised terms in specialty coffee.  Once a symbol of a serious coffee business its now reduced to yet another branding exercise. Many roasters claiming a Direct Trade relationship have never stepped foot in the origin country of the coffee!

… anyway, I’ll jump off my soapbox now.

Our travels yesterday took us to both of our Subak Abian (co-op) partners in Kintamani and while there wasn’t a lot of coffee action happening we had a lot of laughs and fun with an amazing bunch of people.

Despite almost no common language we were  given tours of amazing tropical jungles, taught the Balinese word for fart and fed more oranges than we care to remember.  This is real Direct Trade, as much about the heart as it is about the coffee.
P.S. For the Epic crew, yes, Sarah is still watching you!

Real Direct Trade

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  • http://www.aboutcoffees.com/ K Cups

    Did your crew have a translator at least?

  • Shaughan Dunne

    Yes, we have an amazing translator to help us out. Would be impossible without him. He gives us literal and cultural translation which is important. This was just a little side excursion we went on with some farm workers during some downtime due to an equipment failure.