A while back, I was wandering the streets of Poble Nou, the former industrial district of Barcelona where more and more specialty coffee businesses are setting up shop in the shadows of large company HQs like that of Google. There, on the C. de Pere IV 205 was a Three Marks coffee shop that you would have missed if you didn’t know it was there. Almost like a speakeasy during Prohibition.
This small coffee shop is now closed but for a while, it was like a tiny kiosk inside the office of 3D design agency Six’n’Five whose founder Ezequiel Pini is a big fan of Three Marks. On the day of my visit, Marc Aguyé was behind the counter brewing fresh coffees using the Aeropress, the only brew method available while the other Marc(o)’s were sitting at a round dining table tapping away at their laptops.
Ever since Three Marks first opened its doors, it has become a fixture on the Barcelona coffee circuit. Locals and visitors alike venture out to its flagship café on the corner of Carrer d’Ausiàs Marc in Eixample to sit on its terrace and sip on expertly prepared coffee. I vividly remember the first time I visited this place together with my friend Dan O’Regan with whom I waded through ankle-high rain on an unusally wet October afternoon to find refuge inside the Three Marks café.
In more recent years, I hosted a public cupping at their roastery near Parc del Forum and repeatedly featured one of their excellent coffees in our monthly Coffeevine box. Earlier this year, they even had a pop up at Saint Jean, a local café and bakery, while they were attending the Amsterdam Coffee Festival. I have always loved their aethetic and their fearlessness. Many roasters that I work with are very rigid about what they allow themselves to do and how they want their brand to be perceived.
Three Marks are more happy to experiement and to try different things to see what sticks. What is clear is that over the years, they have gotten better and better at what they do and the outstanding coffees they work with speak for themselves while also looking to open their third permanent location in the city of Barcelona.
For their latest Coffeevine feature in this month’s European coffee roasters selection, they roasted an outstanding black-honey processed Pacamara coffee from Finca Los Pirineos in El Salvador. El Salvador is the smallest Central American country and known for its Pacamara heavy specialty coffee output. Finca Los Pirineos sits at 1.400 meters above sea level on the slopes of the Santa Ana volcano. This provides the farm with rich volcanic soil to grow its myriad coffees. For this particular lot, expect a rich and velvety cup profile with notes of blackberry, hazelnut and orange.
Our December 2023 European Coffeevine box is already sold out. Make sure to visit our shop again after 16.12.2023 to pre-order the January 2024 European coffee roasters box.
