Our newest blend, from the future
We don’t know exactly what the future of coffee will taste like—but we know it will not be defined by a single species, origin, or system. It will be shaped by climate pressure, new natural and lab-developed cultivars, experimental processing, and deeper collaboration between agricultural research institutes and producers across origins.
Our newest blend—Robusta TR—is an exploration of that future: a coffee cultivar designed to support the shifts already happening in real time across production, sourcing, and the global coffee landscape. Robusta is considered less "prized" by specialty roasters and consumers compared to Arabica for its sensory character being generally less sweet and complex, less clean and carries funky herbacious and earthy flavours. We've used 15% Robusta beans in this blend, paired with sweet Bolivian Arabica beans to introduce the Robusta profile and add texture to the cup.
Arabica Is Already Under Climate Pressure
Arabica, over 60% (ICO) of the coffee produced and consumed globally today, has been vulnerable to climate change for decades. Over the past 10 years, our exporters and importers have consistently reported rising production costs across all origins we work with, alongside declining yields driven by increasingly rapid and unpredictable weather patterns. For many subsistence coffee-farming communities, this compounds into direct livelihood instability—built on an already fragile economic foundation shaped by centuries of extractive colonial pricing structures in coffee. When yields become unpredictable and costs rise faster than income, the entire economics of coffee farming come under sustained pressure. In response, we have remained committed to increasing our price returns to exporters year over year in step with these realities. In 2026, our costs paid to exporters have increased by approximately 50% compared to the average of the previous three years. Research projections underscore the scale of the shift ahead:
Up to 20% of current Arabica-growing land may become unsuitable by 2050 (Reuters)
According to London’s Royal Botanic Gardens Arabica could be extinct by 2080.
Vietnam: The Center of Robusta—and Its Reinvention
The Robusta TR blend features our first lot from Vietnam—a country at the center of global Robusta production and increasingly at the forefront of its reinvention. Vietnam is the world’s largest producer and exporter of Robusta coffee (World Coffee Research).
For decades, most Vietnamese Robusta has passed through commodity markets as a cheap filler for commodity brands, but this is changing! Across the Central Highlands—particularly Đắk Lắk province we are seeing a shift from volume-driven production toward traceable, quality-focused, experimentally processed coffee
Farms, processing stations, and research institutions are increasingly aligned around a new question: what happens when Robusta is grown and processed like high quality Arabica? The Robusta in this blend was sourced and processed by Soul Fine Coffee, a woman-owned green coffee producer based in Đắk Lắk—Vietnam’s coffee heartland. Founded by two sisters rooted in the region’s coffee-growing culture, Soul works directly with farming communities to produce traceable, specialty-grade Robusta through experimental fermentation and processing, selective cultivation and lot separation, rigorous sensory evaluation, sales to specialty roasters internationally.
They are certified Q Graders (the highest certification standard of sensory analysis in the specialty industry) which helps them innovate process with their farming partners and their own green coffee production to shift expectations of what Robusta can be in a specialty context. We discovered Soul through our roasting partners Union Coffee and Epoch Coffee who imported these beans.
Our Blend Robusta TR
Our newest blend—Robusta TR—is not positioned as a long-term replacement for Arabica, but as an exploration of new species and cultivars that we believe, must be considered on specialty menus for a sustainable future for coffee production.
The Robusta TR component, anaerobically fermented, brings a dense, structured intensity to the cup: deep earthiness, umami-like depth, chicory-like bitterness, and a distinctive sesame-cookie sweetness that lingers through the finish. It creates a powerful, full-bodied frame that defines the structure of the espresso.
Alongside it, Taypiplaya from Bolivia, made from a field blend of 3 Arabica varieties—also anaerobically fermented—plays a grounding and balancing role. It brings a softer, more foundational sweetness reminiscent of toffee, along with a silky, rounded mouthfeel that carries the blend. Together, the two components create contrast and cohesion: structure and softness, intensity and sweetness, depth and lift.
In the cup, this blend is deliberately expressive. As espresso, it presents intense full body, earthy depth and umami character. We taste chicory, sesame cookie, and toasted barley and malt.
Paired with milk, it becomes rounded and almost dessert-like, amplifying its chocolate and caramel-like sweetness while maintaining structure.
On filter, it shifts toward something more unconventional: funky herbacious aromatics and an earthy fermentation character. We'll put it this way, this is NOT a neutral coffee!
Robusta TR represents a broader shift already underway across coffee origins: a system responding to climate pressure not through singular solutions, but through diversification—of species, cultivars, processing, and collaboration.
Robusta, once positioned outside specialty recognition, is increasingly part of that conversation. Not because it imitates Arabica, but because it offers different strengths: resilience, structure, and emerging sensory complexity when treated with care from farm through sourcing and presentation to consumers.