“Single-origin” is one of those phrases that appears on so many coffee bags today that it has almost stopped meaning anything. So before you see it on another one of ours, we want to explain what the term actually means — and where single-origin fits (and doesn’t fit) into what we roast.
What the term is actually supposed to mean
Single-origin means that all the coffee in the bag comes from one place — one country, usually one region, and often one farm or cooperative and one harvest. It isn’t a mixture of coffees from different countries, with the proportions quietly adjusted whenever the market changes. What you taste in the cup is the result of that particular place and that particular season.
That matters because coffee can express the characteristics of its terroir. Altitude, soil, rainfall, and processing method all have an impact on flavour. A Kenyan coffee grown at 1,800 metres will taste fundamentally different from a Brazilian coffee grown at lower elevations — not better or worse, just genuinely different.
Blending tends to smooth out those differences. Single-origin coffee, on the other hand, allows them to show.
Why blends exist — and why we still use them
We want to be fair to blends, because they exist for a reason. Their main advantage is consistency.
For some of our larger clients, quality and uniqueness aren’t the only things that matter. They need the cup they serve this month to taste the same as it did last month, and to remain the same next month — regardless of how the latest harvest from a particular origin turned out.
Repeatability is one of the main purposes of a blend. And for a business serving hundreds of cups a day, that is a completely legitimate priority.
We have nothing against blends as a category. Even at professional barista championships, many competitors choose to compete with blends rather than single origins. Building a great blend is a craft of its own, not a shortcut.
That’s why we still keep a few blends in our range, created specifically for clients who need consistency above all else.
A blend isn’t a compromise — it simply has a different purpose. Our blends exist because some of our clients need repeatability first. Everything else in our range exists because we want to give you the opportunity to taste a specific place.
What this looks like across our range
Outside of those few blends, the rest of our range consists of single-origin lots. Here’s a quick idea of what you can generally expect from the origins that are currently regular features in our lineup:
- Ethiopia — often floral and tea-like, sometimes with notes of jasmine or stone fruit so distinctive that the cup can feel quite different from what many people traditionally think of as “coffee.”
- Colombia — balanced acidity, caramel notes, and an approachable, comfortable everyday cup that certainly doesn’t need to be part of a blend to feel complete.
- Kenya — bright, almost berry-like acidity that can sometimes taste closer to blackcurrant than to what you might expect from a more traditional coffee profile.
- Brazil — lower acidity with nutty and chocolatey notes. Brazilian coffee is often underestimated because of the assumption that “Brazil” automatically means a base coffee or filler for a blend.
Of course, these descriptions would lose much of their meaning if we simply mixed all of these coffees together. It’s also important to keep in mind that these are broad, general descriptions of coffees from each country rather than tasting notes for any specific lot in our range.
The profile can also change dramatically when a coffee is processed in a way that isn’t typical for its region. A washed or anaerobically processed Brazilian coffee, for example, can taste very different from what you might normally associate with Brazil.
The point of keeping most of our range single-origin is precisely that it gives you the opportunity to taste those differences — between a Colombia on a Tuesday morning and a Kenya on a slow Sunday, for example — and choose a coffee that fits the moment rather than simply choosing “coffee” in the abstract.
The honest trade-off
Single-origin doesn’t automatically mean “better than a blend.” It’s simply a different promise.
It means accepting more variation from lot to lot because we aren’t trying to artificially smooth those differences out. When a harvest is exceptional, you’ll taste it. And when a season is more ordinary, you’ll taste that too.
For most of our range, we would rather be honest about that natural variation than manufacture a consistency that isn’t really there. And for the clients who genuinely need that consistency, that is exactly what our blends are for.
If you want to experience the taste of a specific place rather than a recipe, take a look through our single-origin range and start with whichever origin sounds most like your kind of morning.
