Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/123507
A C O U R T E SY M E L B O U R N E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O F F E E E X P O merica's West Coast changed Nolan Hirte's perception of coffee. In 2007, the then-Perth resident won the Western Australian Barista Championship. As a reward, Five Senses—the roaster of the coffee he'd competed with—sent him to the United States. In a rented Toyota Camry, he slowly covered the 1,400-mile expanse between San Diego and Vancouver, B.C., stopping at as many coffeehouses as possible to absorb U.S. specialty coffee. "I met all the barista champs and saw all the interesting places," he says, "and realized that everyone had a real understanding of where their coffee came from. It really inspired me, and it showed me that I needed to bring that kind of specialty coffee to Australia." Cut to 2013, and Hirte—now having relocated to Melbourne—owns Proud Mary Coffee, a roaster with a retail shop and about 20 wholesale accounts. Though Proud Mary is small, it's one of hundreds of quality-obsessed specialtycoffee businesses that dot the thriving café landscape in Melbourne. And while Melbourne may be the epicenter of Australia's specialty-coffee activity, great coffee has an undeniable presence in the country's other metropolis, Sydney, and is emerging throughout the Land Down Under. This month, the international coffee spotlight will shine on Australia when MELBOURNE SCENE: Clement Coffee Roasters (top); the 2012 Melbourne International Coffee Melbourne hosts the World Barista Expo's Huhtamaki/Hario World Brew Bar (bottom right and opposite page); and Switchboard Café. Championship as part of the Melbourne International Coffee Expo (MICE). With that changed through two historical developments, according to thousands of coffee pros descending on the city, we offer a Christine Grimard, editor of Melbourne-based coffee publications look into what's behind the blossoming of specialty coffee in BeanScene and Global Coffee Review. The first was the presence of Melbourne—and Australia as a whole. American soldiers in Australia during World War II; their demand for coffee led some establishments to begin offering it. "They ended up dating a lot of local Australian girls, and they would take AUSSIE'S COFFEE ORIGINS them out and get them into coffee," Grimard says. The second The country of Australia (also known as the Commonwealth development was the arrival of Italians in the following decade. of Australia) is the sixth-largest in the world by total area, and "There was a really big Italian immigration in the '50s, and that it's located on the opposite corner of the world from the United drove the coffee culture here," she says, "and that's why it's almost States. "I feel like we've probably been overlooked a little bit entirely espresso based." because we're so far away," Hirte says. Yes, in Australia's coffee culture, espresso reigns supreme. So what allowed the seemingly isolated nation to powerfully Among the most popular drinks are two latte variations—the flat connect to the globe's specialty-coffee push? Australia's origin white and the piccolo latte—meaning that milk also plays a large as a British colony led to tea being the dominant beverage, but role in the country's café scene. "It's an industry cry that you get continued on page 34 freshcup.com May 2013 33