It’s still hard to believe that The Coffeevine will be turning 10 this year but then again, time flies when you’re having fun, right? During the past decade, so many things have happened in specialty coffee and I am proud to have been a witness and a participant in this exciting industry. Many of the roasters that I have worked with over the past ten years are also celebrating their first decade in business, having shared the path with me and many others. One such roaster is Casino Mocca who undoubtedly was the first specialty coffee roaster to draw attention Hungary’s nascant coffee scene.

I vividly recall spending some time in Budapest when my sister was living there and I was at the very beginning of my coffee journey. It was a time in my life when I was still just ‘a blogger’, writing about my favourite coffee bars that I discovered on my many travels and I was truly impressed by the high standard of local specialty coffee bars in the Hungarian captial. At Tamp & Pull, for example, I was served an exceptional coffee from Hasbean, who was a local favourite roaster then.

Casino Mocca emerged during those years as one of the country’s first homegrown specialty coffee roasters who took matters into its own hands. Founded by Lajos Horváth, Zoltán Kis and Szabolcs Temesvári, Casino Mocca set high standards for others to follow giving the founders’ history of competing in the World Barista Championships multiple times and aiming for world class coffee that they saw coming from other parts of the world but weren’t able to source locally.

Initially, Casino Mocca had little local competition and the founders were able to run the roastery as a side gig to their normal day time jobs but with growing international interest in their coffees and a fast-growing local coffee scene, the business more than doubled and is now a full time profession for everyone involved. These days, Hungary has many excellent roasters.

The Coffeevine has already worked with Casino Mocca on various occasions and its coffees were always very well received. That’s why it’s a pleasure to have this fine roaster back in our midst in February, this time with a rather rare natural processed Kenyan coffee from Pearless Estate. In fact, in the ten years we’ve been picking coffees for our boxes, we only ever had one other natural processed Kenyan coffee. It’s always exciting when we can add something more unusual to our boxes.

Kenyan coffees are famed for their crisp and bright cup profiles, usually standing out on the cupping tables with their unique flavour chacateristics. A friend of mine recently said that Kenya originally ‘invented’ washed coffees to make them stay fresh for longer and to prevent spoiling. Might be worthwhile digging deeper into this but the point of this statement was to underline why natural coffees are still a rarity in Kenya. While naturals from Ethiopia and other regions are often highly sought after, in Kenya they were largely regarded as inferior for many decades. This is slowly changing.

I’m glad that we can share this outstanding coffee with our customers this month. It offers a balanced cup profile with notes of blackberry, peach and dates.

To receive this outstanding coffee and its companions for the European roasters selection in February, visit our shop to see all options. Pre-orders close on 15.02.2024 / Ships globally on 20.02.2024