Over the years we have done our best to find and present to you the finest and most exciting roasters from all over Europe, and sometimes the world. So far we’ve worked with well more than 120 different partners but we’re still a long way off having found ambassadors for every country. Next month, we’re able to add a new country to our list: Slovenia.
The small alpine nation bordering Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia has kept a relatively low profile since independence, quietly going about its business of becoming a modern, well-run and open-minded post-communist country, but since Melania Trump moved into the White House, Slovenia has garned a bit more attention in the press.
While it’s not our goal to get political, we do want to tell you about Stow Coffee Roasters, Slovenia’s finest specialty coffee roaster who is the first one to represent this country in one of our coffee boxes.
Founded in June 2016 by Aleš Turšič with one simple mission: to bring specialty coffee to Slovenia. And it’s quite remarkable what they’ve achieved in that short period: they’ve established the leading specialty coffee roastery in the country, started up two coffee academies, one in Maribor and one Ljubljana, and they launched the county’s first coffee festival in Stow Coffee Fest.
It might seem like a lot for such a young startup but Aleš and his team also match this hyperactivty with truly outstanding coffees. We had the pleasure of trying a Costa Rican coffee from them some time ago that blew our minds and they’ve been on our wishlist ever since.
During our cupping session in mid-January, we had the pleasure of tasting a total of three coffees from Stow and all of them did extremely well so the choice was tough. In the end we decided on their outstanding Kenyan coffee from the AA Thitu mill in Nyeri. What’s great about this wetmill is that they are very transparent about their sourcing from local smallholder farmers and exactly how they produce their fine coffees. There is a total of 488 farmers, 378 of which are men and 110 women. You can find more information here.
We’re proud to have Stow Coffee Roasters in our mids for our upcoming [2/18] coffee box alongside our first US roaster in 1 1/2 years and Don Gallo from Spain.
For more information, please visit our coffee box page and preorder your box by 15-02 to avoid missing out.
