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Todd Carmichael Warming Up The Crowd At His Geisha Cupping[/caption]
Todd Carmichael is stepping it up. Last week at the Philadelphia Dilworth Plaza location he held the first Roasters Jam, a monthly blind cupping of single origin lots from different coffee producers. Thirteen lots from the iconic Hacienda La Esmeralda were presented to a room full of coffee professionals. Talk about setting the bar! It certainly sent a message.
When they started 20 years ago, Carmichael and his partner Jean Philippe released their four classic blends. They were a huge success and the partners grew from 20 accounts when I first met them in 1995 to over 5,000 today with cafes in Philly, New York, Chicago, Seoul, Washington D.C. (opening soon) with an eye on other cities. Carmichael has become a bit of a coffee celebrity (a kind of Macgyver of the coffee world), writing for Huffington Post and Esquire as well as starring in two seasons of "Dangerous Grounds" on the Travel Channel
His direction is not without controversy. Todd is highly opinionated and his articles have sometimes rubbed some people the wrong way. In addition he's been criticized by a few fellow roasters for producing blends and favoring a darker roast style. And yet Carmichael is sending the coffee community signals that sets the bar even higher.
First he installed five $15,000 Alpha Dominche "Steampunk" coffee makers in his cafes. They are a marvel of groundbreaking technology, able to recreate almost any brewing process and deliver a perfect cup. And now with the Geisha cupping, Todd is sending a strong signal that he too can produce some of the best single vineyard coffees on the planet.
On the day of the cupping we met and mingled for a while before the tasting. Quite a few local industry people turned out including Old City Coffee, One Village, Greenstreet, and Shot Tower just to name a few. Todd worked the crowd, charming everyone. We got a chance to talk for a few minutes and he shared with me a sample of his exciting rum soon to be made at his new distillery located at his roastery.
After a brief but dramatic introduction where Todd told us that the person who guessed all 13 lots in the correct order wins $1,000, the cupping began.
Many of these lots cost over $100 green and to taste 13 of them is a first for me. We first checked out the nose of the ground beans and again after breaking the crust. Each participant was given a handout listing the names of the lots, altitude, rainfall, directional facing, approximate night temperature and harvest dates. Todd took me through a few and his observations were instructive. He went at a rapid pace, telling me "check out the tomato aromas in 5, lemon in 6 and lime in 7!" The comparisons and contrasts were striking. All were brilliant but of course there were favorites.
The overwhelming winner was the Leon Natural. Almost all participants picked it out as being the best coffee in the room. The flavors were profound, reminding me of crisp apples with berry undertones that one taster said reminded him of blueberry waffles. Just recently, a lot of this went for $176 a pound green.
Before the cupping began Todd proclaimed that, in the next few years, Philadelphia will be recognized as being on the forefront of specialty coffee in America. If he's right....and he's not often wrong, La Colombe will be right there, front and center.
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