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/131835
F or decades, Café Savoy got along just fine without worrying much about fine-tuned roast profiles or the nuances of extraction. The elegant institution has stood since the late-19th century, a stone's throw from the Vltava River near the center of Prague, and it serves as a pillar of the Czech Republic capital's café culture. Last year, however, the café began using coffee from local specialty roaster Doubleshot, a noteworthy shift at the heart of a café community that has long focused more on atmosphere than flavor notes. CAFÉ SAVOY: The shop has stood since the 19th century but recently made a push toward quality coffee. Café Savoy's move put it in line with a growing number of Prague cafés and restaurants transitioning toward high-quality coffee service. It's a movement that's gaining momentum, with local roasters like Doubleshot and La Boheme Café leading the way alongside pour-over-loving cafés and hip educational venues. The result is a burgeoning specialty coffee scene that is uniquely Czech: Fresh-thinking upstarts are blending with long-established coffee spots and building off of entrenched consumer tastes. The influence of renowned roasters from other parts of Europe and even the United States is also playing a role as Bohemia turns its eyes toward better brews. SPECIALTY IN ITS INFANCY The Czech Republic's current coffee scene is tied to the arrival of Italian influence. In the wake of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, which led to the fall of the Communist party in then-Czechoslovakia, Italians made a strong presence. "After the revolution, Italian companies completely took over the coffee market, importing espresso blends, " says Jaroslav Tucek, co-owner of Doubleshot. He says most Czech cafés in the 1990s and early-2000s operated on a contract system—common in much of Europe then—in which those Italian companies would provide free equipment and charge high prices for coffee that many deemed low-quality. To help create an environment of better brews, Prague roasters started rejecting cafés and restaurants asking for these sorts of partnerships. "Companies were used to this [system] so they expected it from us, " says Tucek. Slowly, Prague-based roasters convinced shops to invest in higher-quality machines, which in turn showed the roasters which outlets were willing to give better coffee a chance. Still, in the mid-2000s, many consumers viewed specialty coffee as something of an anomaly. "In the beginning … no one was interested in freshly roasted Czech coffee," says Tucek. "They saw Italian coffee as the only quality coffee. No one knew what specialty coffee [meant]. We actually had to come up with a term." They settled on vyberova kava, which roughly translates to "select coffee." But getting better coffee in retail spaces and creating a lexicon in which to differentiate the product was only half the battle. The quality-minded operators then had to take on the beverage traditions that were part of consumer culture. The standard drink was Cesky Turek, a Czech take on Turkish coffee. To make it, hot water is added directly to coffee grounds—and generally creates a burnt-and-bitter taste profile. "Central Europe has a different taste in coffee," says Daniel Kolsky, owner of another Prague roaster, Mama Coffee. At the onset of the movement, he adds, most Czech consumers were averse to acidity, a key component in quality brews. PIONEERING ROASTERS Strangely enough, a key moment in the development of Czech coffee occurred in Brooklyn. It was there that an American named Charles Fleer, who had spent 1999 to 2001 living in Prague, made a French press in his kitchen and an idea came to him: Why not return to the Czech capital and start a specialty roaster? His epiphany came in 2002 when Italians still controlled much of Prague's coffee industry. Before heading back, Fleer broadened his knowledge by meeting with coffee farmers as well as some leaders in the U.S. coffee industry: "I started cupping with George Howell," he says. The result was La Boheme Café, which Tucek of Doubleshot calls Prague's "first specialty coffee roaster" and "the start of the specialty coffee movement in the Czech Republic." Fleer didn't get the roastery built until 2007, and he launched the company in 2008. "The concept from the start was to bring the highestquality coffees to the Czech Republic and Central Europe," he says, adding that he planned to "roast them on demand for freshness and supply them to the consumer at an honest price." Today La Boheme specializes in providing for high-end restaurants, hotels and cafés. The company nets 50 percent of its sales from the Czech market, with the rest coming from a number of other surrounding nations. Also in the crop of specialty roasters breaking through around the time of La Boheme's emergence were Coffee Source and Mama Coffee. Coffee Source, headed by Tomas Hudec and Petr Kostal, began in 2003 as a wholesaler and started roasting in 2008. Mama Coffee, meanwhile, brought the first fair-trade continued on page 54 Fresh Cup Magazine • freshcup.com 53