A few months ago, I received an email from someone called Adam Victory. The name immediately piqued my interest and I got even more excited when I learned what Adam was looking for. Adam works for Mikava, a vertically integrated coffee producer and farmer who wanted learn how we could potentially work together.

After a few email exchanges, I found myself in a video call with Kevin Doyle, son of Paul, talking to me live from one of Mikava’s farms in Colombia where the Doyles produce some of the most highly sought after coffees in the specialty coffee industry. It was then that we hatched a plan to get Mikava featured as one of our future GEMS roasters and sure enough, when I visited Athens for the World of Coffee a few weeks later, I found my self face to face with Paul Doyle who was surrounded by various giddy groupies wanting to take selfies with him.

It has been a very interesting and exciting decade for the Doyles. Ever since they bought their first farm in Colombia back in 2013, they have been at the forefront of experimental coffee processing and their finest lots are regularly used by budding competitors in every World Championship category, from Barista to cezve/ibrik. In 2022, Shih Yuan Hsu won the World Brewers’ Cup with a coffee from Mikava, for example.

Their two farms, Marsella and Santuario are located in the historial village of Marsella, which sits right in the middle between Bogota, Medellin and Cali, Colombia’s three biggest cities. The Doyles wanted to follow their passion for exceptional coffees and to build a vertically integrated business that would be in full control of growing, processing and roasting coffee, with the latter happening at their roastery in Portland, Oregon.

Paul was one of the first coffee producers in Colombia to use the carbonic maceration method whereby the coffee cherries are placed in steel tank with a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere that brings out the inherent sweetness in the fruit and creates exceptionally complex flavours.

For our recent cupping in mid-November, Mikava sent us two coffees to consider of the 14th GEMS release, both of which blew our minds. In the end, we had to pick one, which became the stunning natural carbonic maceration processed Gesha with an incredibly delicious cup profile offering notes of botanical, orange zest and raspberry.

This coffee is highly limited in numbers. Order yours from our shop. Ships globally on 15.12.2023.