flyingthud

Unlike Klaus, I only have a ten months where I can be obnoxious and elitist, but what I thought might be nice, is that for each one, I’d write a post about my activities as the current WBC. It’s now two months and a day since the finals in Copenhagen, and this as you may have guessed by now, will be the first post. I wouldn’t hold great hopes if I were you.

I’d heard of the lull that follows the win,both from Klaus and James but its been interesting to experience. I think people imagine its a roller coaster straight away, but in reality, although you’re on a constant high for a while, in many ways it back to work. That said, I’m in the lucky situation where work is very exciting right now. Our wholesale is up and going, our webshop came online just over a week ago, and we’re on track to open our own cafe before the end of the year.

My first ‘WBC’ trip was just last week, to Glasgow. It may not sound the most glamorous, but the chance to catch up with old friends and be taken out to dinner in some lovely non touristy areas was really quite a charming start to the year. Most of you can guess what I might be doing in that city, but I’ll let those who hired me choose when they’d like to announce it.

Next week sees a bunch of WBC people in town for one of their big fancy meetings. Personally I’m looking forward to finding out who’ll be the next machine sponsor, and whether or not the rumours of London being the host for the WBC after Atlanta is true or not. On the 30th, I fly back to Ireland with the lovely Cindy Chang for a day, for a whirlwind tourist trip of Dublin and its better coffee haunts.  The next day, will be a big first for me; I fly to Managua for this years Ramacafe event in Nicaragua. 

I first heard of this event two years ago, when Deaton got a chance to go while I was working in Vancouver. This was the first time he met Klaus and Ken from bmag, and I believe his first origin trip too. So my personal goals are clear then, meet a nice danish person, an interesting west coaster, and get to my first farm. Obviously, its going to be great to meet some of the baristas I met at Copenhagen who I believe will be there, and in addition, on the 7th I think, I fly to Guatemala for a couple of days too. I’m really hoping to get to visit El Bosque, whose coffee made up 50% of my competition blend.

I promise, promise, promise I’ll keep some sort of log of how I get on on the trip, though I’m sure many of you will be sick of people gushing about their first origin trips. Expect words likes humbling, charming, spectacular, hot, bites, rash and lots of photos of me beside plants.

Hrmmm, what else. I was lucky to get quite a lot of press attention in Ireland, something that was wonderful and bewildering at the same time. I suppose getting up at 4 am to do morning TV was just as bewildering an experience as standing onstage with that trophy. James had told me in advance that you’ll naturally be nervous beforehand, but once you’re in the room, you quickly realise that your mind can’t comprehend just how many people are watching and so it quickly turns to just you and three people in a room. This was certainly true, but I suspect the fact it was shot in a shed in a garden helped somewhat in keeping me grounded.

Just the other day I was visiting one of our wholesale clients, and a good friend Gwilym in Columbia Road Flower Market only to see Keara Knightly behind me in the que, ordering some cappuccinos. I know I didn’t make the coffees, but I love that she’s drank our stuff. I just know she appreciated that brown sugar sweetness that came through. For the record, she didn’t add any sugar either. Pro.

So I’m sorry I haven’t been more vocal about my goings on, but I will really try to keep you up to date.  I’m getting my site built, slowly (my fault) and am in the process of confirming lots of upcoming trips, with locations such as Canada, Brazil, Colombia and Malahide. I will update the post in the next few hours with some pics.

There you go Deets.