AL + JONNY.

Coffee Supreme HQ 10 West Terrace, Auckland, NZ

What was the thought process behind the naming of Coffee Supreme? A: Well… The guy who named it is not here, Chris Dillon. He founded Supreme in 1993. But I think if you asked him, he might say something along the lines of “The name of our company puts us above our competitors straight away.”

Were you both in the coffee industry long before you started working at Supreme? A: Yes, I’ve been in the industry for a while - half my life. I bombed out of school and started making coffee when I was 16. That was in 1993. J: And where did you make coffee? A: At Captain Delicious. That was the name of the café I started in. When I was invited to leave school I went home, and mum said, “What are you doing home early?” I replied, “They said I could go - I don’t have to be at school anymore.” She was like, “Oh, well you better go get a job then.” So I went and got a job. I later fell in love with sharing coffee and what happens over coffee. J: I’ve been at Supreme for about eight years now and I got into the industry in 2000, right after I finished school. I started off making coffee at L'affare.

Have you noticed anything unique about the coffee culture in New Zealand compared to other countries? J: I think that New Zealand is interesting because we were almost the first to have a really good flat white culture, and it was partly due to our country’s lack of coffee history. In some regards we were ahead of the times. A: Because of our very young history and lack of deep historical roots, us Kiwis are innovative. We can wing it. We’re not attached and we’re not steeped in tradition - not that we don’t have any. But because we’re not limited by tradition, we’re free to innovate and try stuff, and so we do some pretty whacky shit.

Since starting this project I’ve heard the term ‘third wave coffee’ a lot. What does that actually entail? J: It has a lot to do with direct trade. A: Yeah, like roasters buying directly from farmers - which has never happened before. J: Consumers now want to know where their coffee is from. It’s about traceability. You used to just get served a blend and no one promoted where the coffee originated from.

Right, like how we’ll hear baristas say, “Oh, we’ve got this great new Kenyan coffee.” A: Yes, when I was growing up you’d never hear that. It’s just like wine and cheese. Now you’ll hear people say things like, “I like a full-bodied red wine” or specify the particular region that they enjoy their wine from. You don’t go around asking for a house red now do you. “Can I have a carafe of the house red?” [laughs]

You mentioned to me earlier that you’re opening up a café in Brisbane. Do you have a hit-list of cities you’d like to bring Supreme to? A: I don’t think we have a hit-list. Supreme is more about going to cities we’d love to be in rather than places that would make sense commercially. You could say that about lots of things at Supreme. We’re a very cultural, rather than commercially-driven, brand. So we don’t have a list of cities that we ought to be in but we do have a list of cities that we love visiting. J: It all relies on someone who is 'Supreme’. A: We transplant ourselves rather than recruit and hire. We’ll always send our own people because it’s a brand that we nurture and we want to make sure that the people on the ground are very Supreme. Of course we hire locals too. We know we can’t just roll into town and win over a city without hiring locals.

Something that’s really obvious to me is how intentional you are about the branding and marketing of Supreme. Could you talk me through your creative process? J: When I first started we had really great design companies do work for us. But we decided it was best to hire someone in-house to do all the design work - Al oversees the branding. Because of that, the process is quite natural. We all know the brand and understand how things work. A: It’s like when you have a kid, you give them a name and you teach them how to eat and talk, and eventually that kid grows as a member of the family and you don’t have to tell them when they’re eight that they shouldn’t stand on the dinner table or to say, “Excuse me”. They’ve learned those things. So in a way the brand has grown up and has taken on its own personality as an extension of our own culture. It’s like the brand almost leads itself because we’ve given it a hell of a lot of attention and we’ve nurtured it. So now when we say, “Should it be red or yellow?”, we all say, “Red.” We don’t have to make those decisions anymore, we just have to keep steering it, like a kid. It makes designing a pleasure. The brand almost takes care of itself. It’s also about discipline. I remember saying to our head designer in the early days, “No, don’t get bored, just be consistent. Just stick at it. Don’t choose a new typeface because it’s fun.” We have one typeface, we have one red. J: In saying that, we do have fun. We let our different hospo sites have fun. A: That’s true. We don’t want to franchise and open a chain of cafés. Our sites are like a new kid in the family and we treat them as a new child, and let them have their own personality.

If you could only have one coffee that Supreme has stocked for a whole year, what would it be? J: I find that question really hard because if I try and remember my best coffee moments it’s not the coffee that shines, it’s the experience. Sharing a coffee is a higher priority to me than the coffee itself. But to answer your question, I’d have to say that African coffees are by far my favourite. And I’d bet you everyone says Yirgacheffe. A: Yirgacheffe’s great, man! I think another one is that Don Pachi we had. It was from Panama and I got to visit the farm that it was growing on.

Okay, last question! If you could have coffee with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be? J: This might sound really lame, but my answer is that I don’t know because I haven’t met that person yet. I love the act of meeting someone over coffee. Like I was really excited to meet you today over a cup of coffee. I’m really excited about the next person I’ll meet over coffee and I don’t know who that’s going to be. A: I’d have to say my kids, when they’re adults. You know when you think about having a beer with your kids when they’re older? When you’re not living together and you meet up for dinner? I look forward to that.

BLUE BOTTLE.

Blue Bottle Coffee 4270 Broadway Oakland, CA, USA

Once I started planning my trip to California, Blue Bottle was right up there on my list of places to visit. I had always heard so much about it - and only great things. Not to my surprise, I ended up visiting 4 of their locations within 2 days. Each of the them were completely different but totally beautiful in their own ways, cheesy but true. These are some images I took after having a tasty iced Americano at one of their Oakland spots. And yes, the light in there is a photographer’s dream.

AARON.

Hamilton, NZ

What made you fall in love with coffee? Yes, I fell in love. And I’m still falling. Perhaps my perpetual fall can be traced back to some key components: Peer pressure. Not the bullying kind. My older sister started drinking coffee way too young, I thought it was cool. So I joined the madness. Sometime later I discovered that what we had been drinking was pretty blasphemous to true coffee. Around that time I was apprehended by espresso. One could say this was my doorway into true life.

What’s your go-to coffee preparation method? V60 pourover. I love the simplicity. I love the mellow result. And somehow I feel more connected to coffee through this process. Perhaps because there is zero automation. Everything is manual, I like that.

Who’s the most fascinating person coffee has connected you with? I think coffee only connects you with fascinating people. There is a standout, though: Kim Boyd. She’s a hero. She showed me passion and skill for the industry at large, zeal beyond coffee but always with coffee in mind. Not just ratios, grind, temperature, and latte art; but décor, personality, people, and service. Kim = hero.

Outside of making coffee, what are you passionate about? People. Family. Anything that connects, voices, promotes love. Coffee has this capacity. As does much. As does music. So I write with notes and letters, mostly my guitar and pencil. We have a lot to uncover, so I’m grateful for more than one tool to dig with.

Where do you get your caffeine fix on your days off? SL28, Grey Street Kitchen, Rocket Roastery or Demi Urgos. They all have their own quirks. Generally I’m just looking for true coffee and a good place to converse. Said spots have both.

Do you think that there are any life lessons we can learn from the process of making a cup coffee? Many. Particularly, we can learn from the care and commitment it takes both to make and consume good coffee. You work hard to honour, you take care of the details, you keep the whole picture in view, you enjoy the making, the partaking, and you stay true.

How has coffee played a part in your creative process as a musician/songwriter? Coffee has played her part very well. She is so good at keeping me up late, then getting me up early, after the late! She is much more than her ability to caffinate, though. Coffee has taken me deeper into creative process, teaching me detail, care, and uniqueness. These qualities can be translated for many a circumstance and creation – but I take special care to implement them in and through music.

If you could have coffee with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and why? The Apostle Paul. He is wild, with a story for the ages. And I wonder how he brewed his…

SLURP SESSIONS.

Instagram | @slurp.sessions

Slurp Sessions was conceived and created by Sam McTavish and Andrew Payne as a way for coffee enthusiasts and professionals to connect and learn, both collectively and collaboratively. On occasion, they have found the New Zealand coffee industry to be a passive, complex, roastery dominated environment to work in. This structure often puts up barriers to information hungry baristas and other coffee professionals/enthusiasts who simply want to learn and grow their passion for the product they handle daily. They endeavour to remain impartial from company bias. They champion passion and collective learning. Their focus is with each other and the mighty bean. They aim to run sessions every 4 - 6 weeks, ranging from the cupping of overseas coffee to pallet development and more. They attempt to create a relaxed atmosphere with a educational edge, always with a couple of beers after coffee. Their Third Session: S.A.B challenged us to think about the underlying taste sensations we experience when we sample coffee. After their last session they found that some of their participants could not accurately differentiate between the base flavours professionals taste when they cup coffee, let alone delicate flavours. This session focused on a calibration of arguably the three of the main areas of pallet stimulation we experience when we taste coffee: Sweetness, Acidity and Bitterness

YASUJI.

Coffee Pen 6 Basque Rd, Eden Terrace, Auckland, NZ

What made you fall in love with coffee? My first cup of espresso in Australia, about 17 years ago.

What’s your go-to coffee preparation method? The Hario V60. It delivers the most accentuated and crisp flavours, in my opinion.

Who’s the most fascinating person coffee has connected you with? Probably all the local baristas I got to meet in Sydney when I worked there.

Outside of making coffee, what are you passionate about? Music. Just about any kind of music, really - post-rock, jazz, ambient, break beats, techno, contemporary, noise (except pop), gangsta rap, punk, metal etc.

Where do you get your caffeine fix on your days off? My favourite cafés in Auckland are Be Specialty, Camper and ARK.

What was the idea behind Coffee Pen when you started? The idea was to create a space that people find necessary. The same way that speakers don’t work without amplifiers or doors without doorknobs - I wanted Coffee Pen to be that in people’s everyday lives.

How does New Zealand’s coffee industry differ from other cities you’ve worked in? In the USA or Japan, people tend to choose cafes by their name or brand, but here in New Zealand, people have identified and are loyal to their favorite cafes or baristas.

If you could have coffee with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and why? Definitely Steve Reich. I want to know what makes him tick.

ELLIOT.

Ceremony 7 Park Rd, Grafton, Auckland, NZ

What made you fall in love with coffee? It probably all began with the froth from Mum’s cappuccinos from as long ago as I can remember. I then started working with coffee in 2012 at Coffee Lab where I found their passion for coffee absolutely contagious. Coffee is something you can never know enough about it. I also love working with my hands. Most importantly, coffee is this amazing thing that brings everyone together. But what I’ve also realised is that coffee is one of the few things that the western world relies completely on third and developing nations to produce and so, I feel a big responsibility to respect it and make it as good as I can.

What’s your go-to coffee preparation method? I’m lucky enough to have all kinds of brewing equipment at my disposal and I love them all. Brewing coffee is very therapeutic - I enjoy its ritualistic nature. The best things take time and precision, and with coffee it’s very rewarding! I think I do want to get a percolator though - just for the challenge and novelty.

Who’s the most fascinating person coffee has connected you with? I’d say David Tua. That guy is nuts. He ordered a nine-shot espresso, and then he expressed it wasn’t strong enough. So I made another one - which he drank like water. If my arithmetic is correct, that’s 18 shots of espresso! That’s 180g of ground coffee so right before my eyes, that guy chowed down on what would be an entire retail bag of coffee and was completely unfazed.

Outside of making coffee, what are you passionate about? I feel like I’m still in the honeymoon phase of my coffee career. But I am also still honeymooning with music and playing the drums. I started playing when I was eight and I just love it more and more as time goes by. Music has been good to me. I teach some really awesome kids and I also get presented with amazing opportunities to tour around the world (I’ve just returned from Edinburgh!) with the best people I could have ever hoped to call my friends. I never knew I could be bivocational and love both music and coffee equally. The satisfaction doesn’t come solely from creating the sickest latte art or beats, it’s that both of these extensions of who I am are very powerful things that bring people to one another, and I just love people, man.

Where do you get your caffeine fix on your days off? Pretty much any time I’m not at working at Ceremony, you’ll find me at Ark in Takapuna on the North Shore. Any day off, or late start I get, I usually begin there. It’s run by the most lovely people and they have the balance of consistent excellence and hospitality down. It’s my zen place. If I’m over the bridge, it is always Camper in Newmarket run by old friend, Lee.

What’s the deal with specialty coffee? Specialty coffee is all about transparency between farmers and buyers, buyers and roasters, roasters and baristas, baristas and customers. Coffee lovers and professionals taste coffees from around the world, score them out of 100 and anything over 82 is classed as specialty grade. Fair Trade has done a fantastic job at exposing a serious world ethical issue about farmers who aren’t getting enough for their work, but it isn’t always a guarantee of quality or taste. What has always existed, even before FT, but is rapidly gaining well-deserved popularity, is this culture of paying premiums directly to farmers on quality, rather than quantity returns, up to 250% above market rate. Take wine for example. The loose rule is the more expensive the wine, the more hands have been involved in the process to create the crafted, respected beverage. You don’t pay a universal price for every 750ml bottle of wine, right? Specialty coffee is the same way. It’s us saying yes to paying that 50c or dollar more, to know exactly where your espresso or filter came from, how it was processed and what it’s going to taste like. You might be lucky enough to even get the name of the guy who grew that lot of coffee! It is so great to see passion slowly taking over profit margins in cafes. We are all moving forward in buying what is excellent and paying the right price for it. All of this demands much more of us as coffee makers and roasters though. We spend a lot of time learning about these coffees that are so expensive, we invest a lot into the right equipment to do the right job and spend a lot of time developing our palates to know that what we are serving is worth our time creating and worth the customers’ money to drink. Sometimes this means a cafe may decide not to serve certain milk varieties or make certain drinks. At the end of the day, this is all about respecting the product, protecting a brand, and the simple fact that some milk varieties just do not work with some coffees. It’s a barista’s job to know what works and what doesn’t and to advise accordingly. I am a big fan of Direct Trade. All that means is a roasting company has gone out of their way to establish a one-on-one relationship with the farmers. In the collaboration, they get to negotiate the best prices that work for both parties with no middlemen and access the best coffees from the farm.

Can you describe your dream café to me? My cafe would be the java version of Room of Requirement. Imagine you’re just walking around and then you feel like a brew, or that you need somewhere to think about something or meet someone, and bam, a big door appears. You go in and that’s my cafe. Once you’re inside, there are no seats, just magic carpets. I have four arms and do everything by myself. The alien cantina band from Start Wars: A New Hope is playing and everyone is enjoying being on the same level as one another. There’s nothing weird about any of it, of course

If you could have coffee with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and why? It would be sushi chef, Jiro Ono, who has so beautifully displayed how a life of discipline and commitment to your craft is a life worth living. I was so inspired to see someone dedicate their life to crafting something seen by most people as simple or basic, but going to the furthest lengths to produce something that has become his expression of art. So it’d be pretty nice to put a pot on with that guy. Alternatively, the fictional character from Tom Hanks’ 1996 filmThat Thing You Do, Guy Patterson.Though he’s never really existed, I learned so much about the love and pursuit of music, as well as working with others in bands from that movie. So weird, yes, but whatever - I feel like we’re boys. If anyone hasn’t seen it, please let me know and we can watch it together.

AMBER.

Long + Short 211 Parnell Rd, Auckland, NZ

What made you fall in love with coffee? A whole list of things. The flavour, the nostalgia associated with my childhood and my dad’s love for coffee, the vibe of being in a cafe, and the process of grabbing a coffee on the way to an 8am lecture. Ultimately it’s the excitement of making coffee that has really drawn me in. I still find it so fun.

What’s your go-to coffee preparation method? At home it’s a V60 because it’s easy and tastes delicious (also I’m the biggest fan of soft brews). At work it’s my Moccamaster - it makes a large batch of filter coffee and you can’t argue with refills of a damn good batch brew.

Who’s the most fascinating person coffee has connected you with? I once met an Australian theatre star - he was on tour with his show in Auckland and was wearing a giant fur hat. I can’t remember his name but he was the most flamboyant, interesting and theatrical man I’ve ever met.

Outside of making coffee, what are you passionate about? Music, the ocean, art, adventure, film - pretty much anything and everything, I am endlessly fascinated by the world.

Where do you get your caffeine fix on your days off? It depends on who I’m with and where I am. One of my flatmates works at Ceremony in Grafton so my friends and I often head there on a Saturday. My favourite place of all time was Good One but it’s closed now, so I can’t wait for Coffee Supreme to do something new in Auckland. I’m a big fan of Camper too.

How has being a barista impacted your work as an artist/musician? My cafe is pretty chill so it has definitely created a place for my mind to wander and be inspired, particularly by the music we play. I’ve gotten to meet so many cool musicians and on a practical level, being a barista is my source of income to fund my own music-making.

What’s next for you? I have no idea. Hopefully travel, more coffee and a lot more music-making - something that I can share with the rest of the world.

If you could have coffee with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and why? Damn, this is hard. Probably Wes Anderson. Or Prince. Or both at the same time. And maybe Audrey Hepburn as well. Oh, and John Hughes who directed Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is my favourite film.

SAM.

Major Sprout 21 Graham St, Auckland, NZ

What made you fall in love with coffee? I’d say it was the first time I had a single origin espresso in Melbourne, eight years ago. I was amazed at the amount of flavour, sweetness and intensity in this espresso shot and it just captured my imagination. I realised that coffee was more than just a hot beverage. I was hooked and it made me want to try more.

What’s your go-to coffee preparation method? The V60 Pour Over. Its paper filter offers a balance of clarity and body that I enjoy. I use a two-cup at home which makes it perfect for sharing.

Who’s the most fascinating person coffee has connected you with? Last year I was lucky enough to meet Scott Rao at a coffee talk he had done. The following day, he came into the café I was working at and I got to sit, share a coffee with him, and ask him a bunch of geeky coffee questions.

Outside of making coffee, what are you passionate about? Spending time with family and friends because they are really important to me. I also enjoy cooking, eating and trying new beers.

Where do you get your caffeine fix on your days off? I love going down to Camper Coffee in Newmarket.

How has your appreciation for coffee evolved over the years? Over the years of working in the coffee industry, I’ve gotten to see all the effort that goes into the process, from plant to cup. It has given me a greater appreciation of how lucky we are in countries like New Zealand, where we’re able to enjoy a delicious beverage at such affordable prices. I think this is something the general consumer overlooks time and time again.

What would you like to see more of in New Zealand’s ever-growing coffee industry? I’d like to see more small roasteries in Auckland roasting and serving coffee on-site with an emphasis on using high-grade green beans. I’d also love to see more educational events for industry workers and coffee enthusiasts alike.

If you could have coffee with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and why? Richie McCaw. I’m a massive All Blacks fan.