Two years ago, two of my dearest friends got married on the island of Barbados. It was going to be the wedding of the year and a large group of our friends were really looking forward to this first post-covid trip together. As is my tradition, after booking our flights and accommodation, I took to the internet to investigate where and if one could find any specialty coffee on Barbados. The island is fairly small with around 281,635 inhabitants and I didn’t know if it was firmly in the grip of Starbucks and the like or if instead, there was a small but vibrant local coffee scene. To my great surprise I found, after some digging, a local specialty coffee roaster and I couldn’t believe my luck.
Wyndhams Coffee was founded in 2014 by husband and wife team Mandy and Dominic Wyndhams in an effort to shake things up. Though faced with many challenges such as sourcing fresh and delicious coffee to Barbados and finding a suseptible audience for its messaging, Wyndhams has prevailed in the unlikeliest of places and now, it is making its Coffevine debut as one of our Global coffee roasting partners for September.
After getting breakfast at a local joint near the capital Bridgetown on our first day, we headed over to the roastery – there is no café – and met with Dominic who welcomed us – my partner Michal and best friend Maxine and I – like old friends. He gave us a tour of the roastery, introduced us to his staff and then took us to the beautiful showroom where gave us a taste of the coffees they were roasting. Dominic admitted that the local scene was very small and that trading with other Carribbean nations was more difficult that one might assume. Turns out, many of them impose high tarriffs on coffee. Protected local industry yada yada. But luckily he’s been growing the business internationally in other places like the US and Europe.
Unfortunately for us, we didn’t find any other place on the island that could prepare a really banging cup of specialty coffee but I always travel prepared and regularly made pourovers for us at our Airbnb, also with Dominic’s beans. We have kept in touch ever since that visit in 2022 and I kept telling Dominic that I would love to feature them in our Coffeevine box when the right moment came around. And that moment is now.
For its debut, Wyndhams will roast for us a super juicy and tart natural processed coffee from Burundi. Like most great Burundian coffees, this one was also produced in the Kayanza region of the small East African country. It hails from Burundi Specialty Seeds, a producer coop with around 1.500 smallholder farmers. After picking, the coffees are sundried on raised African beds before being bagged for a yeast fermentation process that lasts around 3 – 5 days. Then, the coffee is sundried again for around 25 – 30 days before being ready for export.
I’d bet you’ve never a coffee roasted by a more exotic roaster than this so don’t miss out!
To receive this excellent coffee or to order any of our other offerings, just visit our shop now.
Pre-orders close on 15.09.2024 / Ships globally on 20.09.2024
