Ethiopia Guji Natural wins Good Food Award
by Marta Sprague
Yoohoo! We are still pinching ourselves!
We are one of 15 coffee roasters that won the national 2018 Good Food Awards! Our winning single origin is the Ethiopia Guji, Natural Process from Kayon Mountain Farm. This coffee was chosen out of 2000+ entries that the GFA judges received. We knew we loved our Ethiopia Guji, but … wow, to say we are honored is an understatement.
What are the Good Food Awards and how do they choose the winners of the coffee category, you ask?
From their website :
The winners of the Good Food Award for coffee will be distinguished by exemplary flavor – sweet, clean, well developed body, balanced acidity and phenomenal aromatics. To qualify for entry, roasters and coffee farmers must emphasize fairness and transparency from seed to cup. Acknowledging the difficulties of verifying farm-level sustainability efforts across continents, the Good Food Foundation again turns to third-party certification bodies for assistance in identifying beans eligible for consideration.
This meant a trip to San Francisco for Kevin and me to attend the ceremony at the Herbst Theatre on Jan. 18. The awards were presented by Alice Waters and Madhur Jaffrey (I have both Alice’s and Madhur's cookbooks, so I was extra stoked). The program was a celebration of quality and sustainability in food and beverage production. Several winners gave inspiring speeches about their personal histories and business philosophies. The after-party was held at Airbnb’s modern and eclectic headquarters where a delicious spread of winning products consisting of charcuterie, cheeses, chocolates, fish, honeys, elixirs, beers, coffees (including our Ethiopia Guji!) and more were served. It was a delicious cornucopia of the nation’s top producers and their winning products. Needless to say we ended the evening with our stomachs and our hearts feeling full. Kevin enjoyed meeting other coffee roasters at the event, including the roasters at Blueprint Coffee and JBC Coffee Roasters, by whom he was seated. Here’s a shout out to two other Texas companies that won: Strange Land Brewery and Lox, Box, and Barrel, Celtic Seafare.
An interesting item of note regarding the awards … all 15 winning coffees were from Ethiopia. As Ed Alagozian, of Pachamama Coffee Cooperative so accurately stated, “The real winners of the Good Food Awards are the coffee farmers in Ethiopia."
Of course, while in San Francisco you partake of all of the food and coffee! Some favorite stops this trip were Andytown Coffee Roasters, Sightless Coffee, Ritual Coffee Roasters, Contraband Coffee Flywheel Coffee Roasters, Foreign Cinema, Plow, La Ciccia, Yuzuki, Royal Cuckoo, the Japanese Tea Garden and a beautiful afternoon exploring Golden Gate Park.
We are still riding on a mental high from the award and what it means to us. As a company that puts an emphasis on how we can continually strive to do better locally as community members and globally with our sourcing decisions, the acknowledgement is both an honor and a validation. We look forward to giving it another shot next year!