Grounds for Burnt Offerings

This post has been a long time coming. For a while now, I have been looking forward to checking out the coffee culture in New Zealand. Part of the reason for this is because word on the street is that espresso is huge deal here. But little did I know what I was in for! I sit here writing this post in a small café called Enigma enjoying some of the best espresso I have ever tasted. Yesterday I was at a café called Ernesto right on Cuba St in the Cuba district of Wellington. The coffee there was also pretty amazing! In fact their coffee is from a local roasting company called Havana Coffee Works. I first read about the owners of this company a few months ago in Idealog and about how Havana Coffee Works came to be. I will be writing more about Havana Coffee Works in a later post. But my main point here is that I have been enjoying some great coffee here in Wellington and also in Auckland.

Though I had heard that Wellington, New Zealand had quite a bit of a coffee culture, little did I know how seriously Wellingtonians and Aucklanders take their coffee? Just about everywhere you go, the coffee shops, the cafes, the bakeries, the restaurants all seem to do a pretty amazing job with coffee. There are also quite a few espresso stands, espresso carts and trailers (kind of like the Skillet for those of you from Seattle). It is interesting for me to note that many folk here will order espresso drinks to do with their meals rather than just scones or other sweets as I am more used to. And since just about every café here serves hand pulled espresso drinks, I would venture to say that Wellington probably has way more espresso serving places per capita than Seattle… but this is just my own unscientific observation. But even at both the Auckland and Wellington airports, I counted more than six coffee shop/cafes at each airport…. and this was not after exploring the whole airport, but just checking out the in the sections I happened to be in.

A short while ago, friend of mine from Seattle, who flies in and out of New Zealand on business pretty regularly, recently told me something interesting about the coffee in New Zealand. He said, and I quote,” I have never had bad coffee in New Zealand.” As we continued to chat, when he was basically saying and I paraphrase is that you can’t get bad coffee in New Zealand. Yes I know this is hyperbole so please don’t write to me pointing out the fact that this is probably a false statement. But one thing I have to admit though that in the few days that I have been here I have yet to have one bad espresso drink. Even at the Auckland airport, where I first drink my first official New Zealand coffee, my latte or as they call it here, flat white, was pretty good actually (by the way, they do have flat whites and café lattes and I am still trying to figure out the difference between the two). I say this remembering the awful, awful latte I ordered from the Seattle’s Best Coffee stand at SeaTac airport this past August when I was about to catch my flight to Amsterdam. Now I know someone is going to get offended and write to tell me that they have had bad coffee in New Zealand, and that may be the case. I can also tell you that if I do find a place here with bad coffee, I will certainly do the write-up. And there are tons of places here to try out and review, which I will… with the places I have check out already, so far, so good…

So if coffee is so big in New Zealand, then how is it that you really don’t hear about it much as you would with Seattle coffee or even European coffee like in Italy? From the little I have been reading about New Zealand culture in magazines like Idealog is that New Zealanders (or Kiwis) are not really known for promoting themselves. They tend to be more laid back and not as aggressive about promoting themselves as you find American or even European businesses. But this I feel will probably change in the near future as some in New Zealand realize that in the global economy, self branding and promotion is essential… and I suspect this will eventually trickle down to the coffee industry and culture…

Anyway these are my first impressions in a country of in which I have been present for less than a week and will be here for a few years to come… and so I will certainly be doing a lot of sampling and exploring of the coffee scene here in New Zealand and especially in Wellington.

In the meantime you may be wondering what the Ground Offerings blog is going to be doing about posting articles on Seattle coffee culture? That will continue to happen via our Seattle based bloggers. In addition, we will be posting regularly on coffee culture around the world. If you are interested in coffee and would like to write for Ground Offerings, please let us know via the Contact Us link above.