A few weeks ago, I decided to organise a trip to Finland to spend some time with Coffeevine team member Stanislav who is based there and has been working remotely with us since May. Yet, after all these months, I thought a team meeting in Helsinki would do our team spirit some good and I was also keen to spend some time discovering the city’s coffee scene.
What I had not anticipated was that my visit would co-incide with the annual Helsinki Coffee Week and I didn’t hesitate once to reach out to the organisers to propose doing an event together. They were all in. The only question was: where?
After digging through my rolodex of contacts, I landed on Kaffa Roastery, one of the country’s leading specialty coffee roasters, and surely they would have some space to host our live cupping event? They sure did.
My old friend Kyle Magyar, an American transplant who’s been living in Finland for some years and who works behind the bar at Kaffa was instantly excited. After all, it has been months since we could gather somewhere for a live event. Find out more about this event here.
Needless to say, the event was a huge success and the next morning, I went back to Kaffa to have an early morning coffee before exploring the city further. That day, I was looked after by Marte Flesvig who prepared me an epic flat white to get my brain juices flowing. It was a dark morning in Helsinki and the darkness was further amplified by scaffoling that still obsured the outside of the building near the old harbour.
The space itself is on the groundfloor of a large industrial building in Punavuori where they have their roastery, the Helsinki School of Coffee and a café that is connected to the Moko Market Café and store, a home decor shop that also offers food.
With a mix of high and low tables, the Kaffa roastery café is not really suitable for large brunch groups, instead it caters to coffee lovers who want to come and enjoy a delicious cup freshly prepared coffee. There is a large range of coffees on the shelves that offers something for everyone, even more dark roasted coffees.
“While our focus is on sourcing the best coffees we can get, we also want to have accessible, better coffees for those people who are not yet accustomed to our bright coffees,” Merte explained. This is definitely not a strategy that is echoed by many other roasters but could well lead to more people getting into specialty coffee.
What I love about the space itself is that you could be sitting up against the glass wall separating the café from the production space while behind you the roasting action takes place. The café is also far enough from the center that people who visit here are either locals, expats or visitors who specifically come to drink coffee.
In hindsight, I am extremely happy that we got to host our event there and that I had some time to come back the next morning and enjoy a quite cup. Highly recommended!
