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30 Fresh Cup Magazine | freshcup.com In HOUSE Heading to Origin B Y C O R Y E L D R I D G E nn Campion had an excep- tionally hard and fast crash course in coffee. Just after her fiftieth birthday she bought a local coffeehouse called Revel Caffe. It was her first business and she'd never worked in coffee. Immediately after the purchase, she took a Pacific Coast Highway trip that became a master class of third-wave cof- fee, taught by baristas from more than twenty of the West Coast's best cafés. Then she went back to Stratford, Ontario, to learn how to use her espresso machine. That year was pure education. But even with ever ything she learned, her trip to origin at the end of her first year in the coffee business taught her exponentially more. Ann traveled to the Nicaraguan cof- fee farm owned by her roaster's fam- ily. Arriving at the farm after dark, Ann, her roaster, and her roaster's youngest daughter had to walk up a mountainside to the farmhouse. Midway up the climb, they reached a drying bed filled with green beans. The young girl said they needed to make coffee angels. Bemused, Ann was brought among the beans and encouraged to lie down and wave her arms and legs, brushing out an angel. The smells of the beans were intoxi- cating, rich with aromas she'd never associated with coffee. "It was like lying in honey," she says. For the next several days she had origin-trip experiences of a more standard type, but each revealed aspects of coffee she could never encounter back home in Canada. "I didn't understand what it meant to pick by hand," she says. "It's life alter- ing. You don't waste a bean, even a roasted bean. Those connections make everything more important." She had a greater understanding of the beans, and maybe in some intangible ways that made her a bet- ter barista, but more than that she had deeper respect for what it took to bring her those beans. "The biggest A C H R I S R YA N May14_magazine.indd 30 4/18/14 10:42 AM