When I launched my monthly coffee subscription in its current form in 2016, I wanted to create a unique experience for coffee lovers through which they could discover spectacular coffees from the most exciting roasters in the world from a box at their door.
Almost six years in, I’ve had the chance to work with more than 200 roasters and featured several hundred coffees. Yet, a regular coffee subscription has its limits with regards to competition level coffees that are often only available in really small quantities and cost significantly more.
That got me thinking that it might be time to add a separate coffee box, one that would offer an exclusive selection of the rarest and most expensive coffees roasted by a list of names who I’ve not had the pleasure of working with so far.
By making this a quarterly box that is not part of a subscription but sold as an individual one-off box, I am also able to offer more flexibility and set the price according to what the coffee costs.
This new box is called ‘Gems’ and it’s now finally here.
Who’s in the first edition?
For the first instalment of this new Coffeevine box, I am teaming up with a roaster from The Netherlands who I’ve been wanting to work with for a long time. Manhattan Coffee Roasters.
This relatively young roastery was set up by specialty coffee power couple Esther Maasdam and Ben Morrow, both of who are multi-award winning baristas who were looking to diversify away from trade shows and competitions towards supplying the best coffee shops with an outstanding selection of beans.
I’ve been closely following Esther and Ben’s career for a while and it seemed only fitting to invite them to be my first partner for this new coffee box not just because they are also Netherlands based but because Ben has very close relationships with some of the most talented producers in Latin America.
What’s the first coffee?
The first coffee is a truly spectacular natural anaerobic processed green tip Geisha from the Janson family estate in Panama. As it so happens, Panama is one of the only two countries where I’ve been able to go on an origin trip over the past few years; Mexico being the other. The estate is situated in the Volcán region in western Panama and renowned for its production of Geishas and other variatals.
Founded by Swedish expat Carl Janson in the 1940’s, the Janson estate has since moved away from breeding cows and built a name for itself as one of the regions leading coffee producer. While this coffee is not the first Geisha that I’ve picked out for one of my coffee boxes, it is the first green tip Geisha from Panama, which is generally considered to be the premier origin for specialty coffee’s finest varietal.
How can I order one?
The Coffeevine Gems box is now available for preorder and highly limited to just 40 bags. In this case, each bag contains 250g of coffee roasted for filter. You can only buy one bag per customer to keep it fair and allow more people access to this unique new box. The price will differ per edition. This particular coffee costs €45 including tracked delivery to all European destinations.
Click here to order your own Coffeevine Gems box before it’s sold out.
