This year our Hunter Bay has made a point to focus on coffee origin, seeking transparency between grower, roaster and retailer, and, most importantly:
Relationships.
To us, relationships connect us to people and place and ourselves as a growing business, one that sees ourselves as far more than transactional. Relationships: to relate to one another, to listen to other ways of being and learn about the lived experienced from different cultures. By design, whenever you work with coffee—or simply enjoy quality brew—you're positioning yourself to listen to other life perspectives with the intent to learn, to relate better.
Last month, Hunter Bay traveled 9,000 miles to Tanzania, Africa, for a little business and a lot of pleasure. This country teems with life, with large game and landscapes and beautiful people and communities. Some words that come to mind when describing this country:
unpretentious, unfiltered, confident, complex, colorful, warm, alive.
We stopped into one of our friends in Tanzania who manages a high-end Arabica coffee farm, Africa Plantation Kilimanjaro, to cup coffees and discuss the future of specialty coffee in Tanzania. Coffee here is world-class and so are the people who grow the stuff. This operation was extremely impressive and ethically sound: from owner to coffee-picker, we saw smiles the whole way through, along with a deep commitment to growing some of the world’s finest coffee.
But we’ll stop blabbering and let the following images speak for themselves. Enjoy.
