--------------------------------------------------------------- The Hill and Valley Gourmet Coffee Newsletter --------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 3 Issue 2, June 2002 This month -:Machines and Machinations :Changes in our range :Life in a Coffee Tree :Out and About :Cup of Care - Uganda --------------------------------------------------------------- We hope you're sitting comfortably as this may take some time.... --------------------------------------------------------------- Machines and Machinations --------------------------------------------------------------- Firstly a hearty thanks to all of you who have decided to choose Hill & Valley as the supplier of your sparkling stainless steel Rancilio Rocky Grinders and Silvia Espresso Machines and your Alpenroast Home Roasters. We appreciate your custom, gladly provide you with any advice we can offer and are really happy when you re-order our coffee after having got through your initial free-gift. We know that on occasion we are not the cheapest sellers, but we still operate below manufacturers recommended retail prices and try to offer a very personalised service. Coffee machines are not our main business, but we remain massively impressed with the efficacy and reliability of the Rancilio home machines and continue to receive almost unanimous endorsements from customers. There have been some "interesting" incidents though, some of which have called into question whether we should be offering machines at all. I hope those that were involved in those incidents were satisfied with how we dealt with the situation in each case. Without going into specifics, sometimes manufacturer pricing policies are difficult to fathom! A small example came up recently which may affect some of you directly. The electric version of the Bodum Santos Vac Pot has been considered by many as the ideal way to conveniently brew seriously good coffee. These machines have been notoriously difficult to find through the established household retail sector, even where a large range of Bodum products have been stocked. The price seems to have hovered around the 100 to 120 pound mark as far as I have observed or been told. I personally never managed to get my hands on one, but we have several customers who have and use them daily. Near to us in Aylesbury there is an outlet shopping mall called Bicester Village, where Bodum have recently opened an outlet. A regular customer recently informed us that the electric Santos was being "knocked out" there for forty pounds - by the pallet load. If you are looking for one, it may be worth finding their phone number and trying to get one. To think we nearly approached Bodum with a view to selling the machines on the web! We'd have looked pretty silly, no? We do get asked a lot to offer various accessories, particularly aluminium and stainless steel tampers, but the fact is that, at our volumes, we cannot source them more cost effectively than individuals can themselves through the web, and we feel that if we offer tampers then why not cleaning brushes, cleaner, jugs, coffee mugs, chocolate covered coffee beans and fruit teas. We never want to be seen as a Whittards Wannabee. We (I) will always roast all our own coffee though, which they most certainly do not! If this changes then rest assured that we will offer tampers to our newsletter subscribers first, but in the meantime we can usually offer advice on where to buy a particular accessory. --------------------------------------------------------------- Changes in our range --------------------------------------------------------------- Regular users of our site will note that our coffees, like the latest movies, come and go... here are the latest movements. ON YOUR SCREENS NOW! JAVA PALAVER - We finally had to accept that we could not get the quality of Java that we need out of current availability and have regretfully withdrawn this coffee from our range until later in the year when hopefully some full featured Javas from our favourite estates will once again become available. A knock on effect has been the withdrawal from e.caffe from our range of espresso blends - as this was our top-seller it was a hard decision - but we were not prepared to tolerate the slightly "flat" espressos that we were pulling using the weaker Java. EXTREME MEASURES - The loss of e.caffe meant that we needed a lighter espresso blend to go alongside Tongkonan and Espresso San Giorgio, and following much market testing at The Coffee Tree in Aylesbury and on our mobile events bar, we launched Extreme Espresso about 2 months ago. Another 3 coffee blend, Extreme showcases the excellent PNG Sigri Peaberry alongside some dark roasted Sumatra and a medium roast Guatemala Strictly Hard Bean. Like e.caffe the blend is easy to live with and encourages the second (and even third!) cup. It also brews a perfectly acceptable all-purpose cup in a cafetiere or Vac Pot. SENSIBLY SUPERIOR - We have decided to slightly uncomplicate our descriptions on Guatemalan and Colombian Coffees, leaving us free to choose between the freshest and best cupping lots available. Thus the Guatemala Tres Marias Huehuetenango and Palencia's Peak that our earliest buyers have become familiar with have become "SHB Superior". The recent offering was Amate, the first coffee that we have in stock from this year's crops in Central America. From next week it will again be the popular Palencia's Peak new crop. Similarly in Colombia, we are using the banner of Colombian Excelso to enable us to buy the best lots available from all the main producing regions. The current offering is from Tolima, a central region producing around an eighth of Colombia's coffee. CHINESE CURIOSITY - Throughout the 1980's and 1990's when traders of Asian Coffees met, the subject of debate often turned to the question of whether China would become a net producer or consumer of coffee. Perhaps fortunately for a world now flooded with cheap low grade Asian robusta beans, the regions suitable for coffee production in China are few, and the potential for increased consumption in a country with no coffee drinking tradition is virtually unlimited. I can remember once working out on a napkin in a Jakarta hotel that if each member of the chinese population drank one cup of coffee per year, then the world's over-production problems would soon start to take on a different light, but I didn't have my calculator to hand unfortunately! Well I think you understand the point. The latest addition to our range, in the Seven Wonders category, then becomes something of a curiosity - an exported Chinese Arabica Coffee of a surprisingly distinctive good character. The coffee hails from the Simao region in Yunnan province and will remind you of a decent Colombian laced with some Java, but it undoubtedly has a character of it's own. Like the Phillipines and Malaysia, China will soon "need" all it's own coffee, but in the meantime it is well worth giving it a try. ROAD FROM MANDHELING - We've again done the switch from Sumatra Mandheling to Lintong as we continually search for the best available from our friends. The first couple of roasts have gone through very well and we feel it has already enlivened the espresso blends somewhat. Those of you familiar with Sumatras may not appreciate that there is a lot of blurring at the edges between Lintongs and Mandhelings and I remember visiting exporters in Medan in the early nineties who carried both coffees bought in the same regions. Up in the hills you can't just ask "take me to where Mandheling is grown and then on to Lintong" - it doesn't seem to work like that. The coffees do have a broadly different appearance, but we suspect that this owes a lot to the preparation of individual growers and not geography. (if it looks like THAT it's a Lintong, etc!) For some reason the US market took the assumption that Mandhelings were "better" and this explains why Lintongs are not so sought out. We've always felt that "taste matters more than brand" and we hope you will agree when you try this latest dark roast. COMING SHORTLY! BOURBON - "STRAIGHT UP" - We have never been huge fans of Brazilian Coffees as part of a range of gourmet or speciality coffees. In general even the best ones have a tendency to be a bit "industrial" or "one dimensional". Brazil has always been the home of coffee as a commodity - hell they have even burned thousands of tons of it or tipped it into the sea to try to bring prices up. Until Vietnam's rise as a coffee producer, intensive industrialised farming of coffee on massive plantations began and ended in Brazil. Homogeneity was the end product, with little room for individual idiosyncratic coffees which spark the imagination. But of course it was not always thus. The bourbon varietal of tree is capable of producing natural unwashed coffees of no little depth and character and in the 70s I can remember buying Higgins' Bourbon Santos in South Molton Street as part of my early coffee education. Thankfully, times are changing and Brazil can now boast to being the only producing country with its very own Speciality Coffee Association. Just this week we have taken on a small lot of a single fazenda (farm) 100% Bourbon coffee, which comes highly recommended and has even won prizes at an annual cup-tasting competition in Brazil. We will bring this into the range sometime during June. PREVIEW TIME! ORGANIC OPERA - I can sometimes be heard in The Coffee Tree ranting on the subject of Organic coffees - to put it simply I feel they must transcend the average of other coffees offered from the same regions - otherwise what is the point? Besides this, I know from personal experience that some of the coffees we already stock are certainly fully organic, although logistics prevent the inspection process from being completed to the point of certification. So far we've stocked two "fully organics"- a Mexican and a Peruvian, which both met with mixed success. We are contemplating a second Organic from Peru which we hope will improve the batting average and this will be added later in the summer. LAST CHANCE TO SEE! ANTIGUA ERODED - stocks of our Capetillo are dwindling fast and we will not be re-stocking until quite a bit later in the year from the 2002 crop. If you have enjoyed this coffee, then you may like to buy another bag soon, for old times sake. COMPLETELY OUT OF AFRICA - well it has finally all gone. The last bag from the fantastic lot of 2000 Main Crop has been enjoyed by many of you Kenya fans out there and we have managed to "skip" the uniformly mediocre and extremely pricey 2001 crop. For at least a few weeks we will be without any Kenyan coffee, but a whisper in my ear suggests we may have some 2002 main crop on the way, of comparable standard. More on this soon, but hopefully it will have enough character to divide you all into love and hate camps... --------------------------------------------------------------- Life in a Coffee Tree --------------------------------------------------------------- We celebrated the first birthday of our Aylesbury coffee house, The Coffee Tree, over the Easter Weekend. It seems ages ago now and life certainly goes on, with our many regulars and occasional "web pilgrims" keeping us on our toes. Like any good meeting place, things happen that seem to have become institutionalised and this is part of the fun. Here are few one liners that may give you a feel for the place : - "We don't have customers - we have users." - Decaf is called "unleaded". - We make scalders, squeelers, justas and H.A.T.'s as well as caps and lattes. - The coffee on the board is hardly ever the coffee of the day - Tea is either "builders" or otherwise, but never with teacakes. - Our Almond Croissant has been described as roadkill. - The best bread we have is never the best seller. - We DON'T do Bacon Butties! - We don't pull single shots. - We had a belly dance troupe blocking the traffic on our birthday. - We never know the price of our hand made chocolates or deli items. - We killed our coffee tree with love. - The traffic wardens think we are subversives. - JB thinks all music we play is whining yobbo noises - except Steely Dan. - When I'm not there, some people genuinely think I've had a day off! - We once had two copies of the Daily Mail stolen on the same day. - We discuss cows stomachs in the spring and autumn. - Our smoothies are distrusted until they try them. - Be very careful when you sit on the outdoor furniture. - The staff's average age is probably 3 times of that in any coffee chain, except on "girly saturdays". - And we still haven't finished decorating the place. ...and no, we don't have high chairs and toast is finished. Thanks to all users and fixers - keep coming, we love you all... well most of you. --------------------------------------------------------------- Out and About --------------------------------------------------------------- Our mobile event season has got up and running since the last newsletter and most weekends yours truly is to be found in a field somewhere in the home counties, surrounded by horses and people in jodpurs. We meet nice people, are well appreciated and try to keep up our quality standards. This year has seen us upgrade our equipment and we are now using gas-converted Rancilio System Machines with Mazzer Super-Jolly Grinders. We've also taken the step to grind all regular coffee daily on site. The biggest change this year has been our decision to put a second trailer on the road. It will be a "double-barrelled" version of the old faithful espresso.street bar that has served us well for two years. Twin Rancilios, Twin Mazzers and looking like something from Kew Gardens with it's "pagoda roof". (Our good taste extends to coffee, not decor and design!) With "espresso.street" concentrating on the Eventing circuit, "Extreme Coffee" will be likely to be seen at other events. Already booked are : - July 6 - Classical Concert with Fireworks at the Milton Keynes Bowl. - September 6-8 VW Action 2000 at Peterborough. - September 13-15 Autumn Eventing at Gatcombe Park, Gloucs. --------------------------------------------------------------- Cup of Care - Uganda --------------------------------------------------------------- Our daughter, Lisa, has just started a 3 month stint teaching at a primary school in Iganga, South Eastern Uganda as part of her gap year. With the help of our friends in Hamburg we have bought a bag of nice Ugandan Bugishu Arabica which we intend to use to raise some money for the school where Lisa is teaching. Using the 50 kilos or so of roasted coffee we are trying to raise at least 1000 pounds to send some much needed materials down to Uganda for Lisa to distribute (although her last communication suggests insecticide and something white made by Armitage Shanks may be a good idea). As the coffee is grown just up the road in the mountains to the North East of Iganga, we think it is appropriate that local kids can benefit from the "value added" for a while at least. For that reason we will not be offering the beans for sale, but will be serving the coffee wherever you find us, either at The Coffee Tree in Aylesbury or on our mobiles, with a "sales tax" and a rattling collection box. You have been warned! Best Regards Debbie & Charlie Massey --------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 3 Issue 2 June 2002. Copyright (c) 2002 Hill and Valley Coffee Ltd. Information freely distributable, but must include this copyright messages. Formatted and delivered by Trainor Thornton Limited "Let us show you how your business can succeed on-line" http://www.trainorthornton.co.uk?source=hvnews062002 --------------------------------------------------------------- T h e G o u r m e t C o f f e e N e w s l e t t e r From Hill and Valley Coffee Ltd. --------------------------------------------------------------- Web: http://www.hillandvalleycoffee.co.uk E-mail: beans@hillandvalleycoffee.co.uk Fax: +44 1296 482717 Tel: +44 1296 482708 Mobile: +44 468 028021 Address: Hill & Valley Coffee Ltd The Coffee Tree 11 George Street Aylesbury Bucks HP20 2HU Privacy: http://www.hillandvalleycoffee.co.uk/privacy.html ---------------------------------------------------------------