As usual on trips to the Raleigh-Durham area, I got to spend quality time with my friend Peter Giuliano of Counter Culture Coffee (Durham, NC), who is a world-respected coffee buyer and educator. (Side plug, check out Peter and Kim’s blog on the Counter Culture website. It’s cool.). On this trip I had the great experience of participating in a “cupping” (the coffee version of a wine tasting) at Counter Culture, led by Peter himself.”Cupping” is a highly structured procedure which breaks the tasting of coffee down into specific sensory blocks such as aroma, acidity, body, etc. What makes cupping really useful is that evaluation of each sensory experience happens at an independent moment — i.e., there’s a moment when you evalate aroma, a moment when you evaluate brightness, etc. This structure, combined with Peter’s expert leadership and instruction, revealed to me heightened levels at which the experience of a beverage coulld accurately be understood and described.

Peter tells me there are similar tools to cupping for wine and beer tasting, and I’m looking forward to learning more about how to use these tools and better understand and communicate the essence of all the beverages we offer.

While I was at Counter Culture, I began working with the Linkery’s longtime friend Rich Futrell (who posted a great comment on our blog a while ago). Rich is going to help us bring our coffee program to a truly world-class one. We’ve made bits of progress with coffee here and there, but it seems like there’s always been little things that keep it from being as good and consistent as it can and should be. Rich is going to work with us on equipment, temperature, serving procedures, and of course, providing an offering of the world’s finest coffees.. We’re going to nail this, and the Linkery will be a fantastic place to get coffee, as it should (and will) be for everything we do.

(Now, rest assured we’re not abandoning our longtime relationship with Santos coffee roasting. Magali is a terrific roaster and huge friend to us. In fact, the plan is that, by improving our coffee program in general, we’ll better communicate the high quality of Santos coffee, as well.)