Welcome to For the Love of Coffee, a blog exclusively for the employees of Vienna Coffee!
This month’s featured coffee is both organic and a relationship coffee from our Deeper Roots connections. Adam Shaw, Deeper Root’s Director of Coffee has spent years traveling to coffee-growing regions around the globe and developing relationships with local and regional coffee producers. Through his relationship with Vikram Patel at Benchmark Coffee Traders he has developed connections with local coffee producers and farmers in the Highland region of Papua New Guinea.
Ariel view of the Highland Regions of Papua New Guinea.
Located in the Southwest Pacific between Indonesia and Australia, the island nation of Papua New Guinea is an incredibly diverse and beautiful place. It encompasses the eastern half of the island of New Guinea which is the second largest in the world. Known for its pristine coral reefs, beaches, and inland volcanoes, Papua New Guinea is perfect for growing some of the world’s finest coffee!
The island nation of Papua New Guinea. Circled is the Highlands Region where our April featured coffee is from.
Regarding the relationship between Benchmark Coffee and the coffee families of PNG, Vikram says “We have funded the textbooks for five elementary schools for six years now and in 2023, in partnership with Deeper Roots, we completed the construction and opening of a brand new elementary school. 88 Children attend this school which has two teachers and a treasurer and is part of the national Papua New Guinea school system. In addition, positive impact projects are central to our perspective on coffee. We don’t just support positive impact projects by buying coffees at fair prices, but we directly engage and directly fund social projects on an ongoing basis. We favor projects with tangible results in the education and water access realms, and women’s hygiene, which we continue to support.”
Papua New Guinea has a 40% illiteracy rate which is among the highest in the world, so free elementary schools have significant impact and help create healthier communities.
It is believed that when coffee first arrived on the island around the late 19th century, Lutheran missionaries planted beans from Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee trees. There are claims that the Germans were the first to bring coffee, but there are also claims that it was British settlers that brought the bean around the same period. The first official documentation of coffee being grown commercially wasn’t until the 1920s. Fast-forward 100 years and Papua New Guinea is currently the 17th largest coffee-producing nation with almost all coffee being produced on small farms. There are approximately 2.5 million people (around 30% of the population!) employed in the coffee industry, the majority working on the approximately 280,000 small farms. 90% of the coffee production on the island is done in the 5 Highlands Provinces of Western Highlands, Eastern Highlands, Simbu, Morobe, and East Sepik.
Coffee estates all over the world often organize themselves as integrated villages, providing workers with structure and services as well as housing. Each of the Carpenter Estates – Sigri, Bunum Wo, and Kindeng – takes care of the needs of its workers fully, providing a modest but distinctively modern lifestyle almost totally independent from the outside world.
Our Organic Papua New Guinea Coffee comes from these small farms through a regional Co-op called the Premium Smallholder Crop. The coffee is purchased from smallholders who pulp, wash, and dry their green coffees. Once purchased, dry milling is finished on the Kindeng Estate. Once we receive the green coffee it is roasted and bagged on-site in our roastery. We are proud to offer this outstanding coffee to our customers! Baristas, you will each receive a 4oz sample bag to take home and enjoy.
Customer Info to share
This coffee shines with a creamy body, low acidity, and subtle notes of cocoa, walnut and brown sugar, with a rich, chocolatey finish.
It’s a GREAT day for coffee!
Matt