Issue 126: November | December 2024
From the Publisher
The founder and publisher of Roast magazine, Connie Blumhardt has spent 25 years in magazine publishing and has worked in the coffee industry for the last 20 years. Connie brings the same passion and commitment to this industry journal that is present within the roasting community.
With each issue, Connie brings insight and inspiration to the pages of Roast with this column.
Connie Blumhardt, Publisher
Incredible talent, dedication and desire for success is all around us. We find it in songs from bands that were never and will never be chart toppers, from creatives who don’t have paintings in famous museums, and from devoted craftsmen in all walks of life, in every profession. To make it big, to win awards and recognition in the eyes of the world generally takes all the talent and drive combined with perfect timing and luck (or, apparently, something only known by a few lucky cats on social media).
I get a bit of a rush when I personally first hear a great song from a little known artist that I wasn’t aware of. I want to know how they came to make such incredible music and why they never achieved commercial success, and then I want to share that story with others. It is an experience I have had over and over in the coffee business and the reason we run the Roaster of the Year competition.
For this year, I hope you will enjoy getting to know our two winners, Wonderstate Coffee (Macro Roaster of the Year) and, in a first-ever win from outside North America, Dear Green (Micro Roaster of the Year) from Scotland. You can read all about each company starting on page 22. Each of these winners has been creating excellence for years and deserves their place in the coffee spotlight. Interesting as well, a hallmark of each company is their commitment to continually self-assessing their progress against their missions and having the courage to take action based on those assessments.
Also deserving of notice are our finalists in each category. For the Macro Roaster of the Year, the other finalists were Driftaway Coffee and Utopian Coffee, and for the Micro Roaster of the Year, Thread Coffee Roasters and Three Keys Coffee. I wish we had room for the full-length feature article that each one of these companies deserves.
In passing conversations, many roasters have told me they are a bit intimidated by the incredible work that these Roaster of the Year companies are doing. Inevitably, even in our 20th year of running this competition, at some point in reviewing all the entries I reach an “I’m not worthy” moment in comparing myself to the results these groups are producing every day. In these moments, I try to recall the words of tennis great (and great humanitarian) Arthur Ashe, “Start where you are, use what you have and do what you can.” Please keep highlighting the great work being done in our industry, and I will do my best to make sure the world knows.
Warmest Wishes,
Connie
Advertisement
