This is another mouth watering washed Ethiopian Limu Kossa coffee that is a Stunner!!! 

Coffee Lab Review : 87/100 CUP SCORE                             

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Kristiane McGregor, from Coffee Lab, is the 2^ND time WINNER of the NZ Coffee Cup Tasting Championship, run by the NZ Specialty Coffee Association on Friday 19^th April 2013.
She will now be representing NZ at the World Coffee Cup Tasting Championships held in Nice, France this June.

At the NZ Cup Tasting championship, the top Coffee Cup Tasters from around NZ compete against each other to win the honor of competing in the World Championship in June.
The competition consists of tasting 8 triangulations (8 sets of 3 black, filter made coffees) of coffee in 8 minutes. The winner has to have the best accuracy with the fastest speed.

Kristiane scored 8/8 in 3.5minutes round 1, and 6/8 in the finals in just over 3minutes to win the competition, cementing her status as a NZ Coffee Industry Super Taster.

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One year has passed already since we opened the Coffee Lab Roastery Cafe and it's been fantastic! So many mazing customers coming through the doors and the best team in Auckland on our staff to fly the Specailty Coffee Flag. We are officially "The Specialty Coffee Dealers of Auckland."  Winning the Gold award for the best organic coffee for the second year in a row was a proud moment for us :) 

We have been roasting a variety of single origin coffees from Brazil, Bolivia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Rwanda, Sumatra, and Kenya which has been fantastic. Cup of Excellence coffees, Organic coffees, Direct Trade coffees, Specialty coffees, Presidential coffees.....espresso, filter, light roast, medium roast .... we love to try it all. The last year has seen our coffee sourcing team go to Sumatra, Brazil and Costa Rica which has been awesome. Importing our handpicked (literally!) coffees from these countries has been a great experience and we are planning on many more trips to get the very best coffee into your hands.

We would like to sincerely thank all our amazing customers for supporting our journey into the world of Specialty coffee over the years. It's been a blast. When you decide to wander into Coffee Lab Cafe, this is what you will find.....

Coffee Lab Caf Mission Statement

We are a Specialty Coffee Company focused on providing an amazing specialty coffee experience through taste and education, amazing fresh food and exceptional service. We all work together as a team to achieve this through a commitment to learn, sharing knowledge and growing our skills. No question is unaskable! We aim to build a coffee destination like no other on the planet. Don't delay!!!! Come and enjoy it...before somebody else does...

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Here it is folks, officially the most expensive coffee we have ever purchased! The Santa Teresa Estate Panama Geisha.  I remember well the first time I tried the Esmeralda Panama Geisha coffee (from the Petersons farm) on the cupping table in 2010. The occasion was the Australasian inaugural Coffee Chemistry seminar run by Joseph Riveira for coffee professional geeks who attended from the companies such as Seven Seeds, Proud Mary, 5 Senses, Saint Ali, Coffee Lab NZ, etc.... There were about 8 coffees on the table ranging from below commercial grade to commercial grade, specialty grade, and THEN there was number 5... All around the room there were ooohs and ahhhs about number 5.... what IS THIS coffee??? Wow we've never tasted anything like it!!!! I was tempted to grab the cup and run off with it and sip away till it was all gone because it was sooo nice. This was scored 96/100 gaining it the highest ever Presidential score in the Cup of Excellence competitions. 

"Now I get it", I thought. Those guys that go on about flavours and taste notes like - APRICOT (which this coffee definitely show cased loud and clear), blueberries, chocolate, honey, maple syrup, lemon.... I thought it was a bunch of baloney until that time, as Michaela Weissman put it so well in her book "God in a Cup" "having a fake orgasm".... But no!!!... it IS REAL and can really only be best experienced with specialty coffees that are produced with extreme accent on quality from the picking of the red cherry to the processing; storage; packaging; freshness; AND careful profile roasting by hand to suit that particular coffee.

So, where to from here, I thought??? Bye bye commercial grade coffee, had enough of that!Specialty coffee is worth the immense attention to detail with the amazing end result.

I remember the first (and only) time I got to taste a little of the 1994 Te Motu Cabernet Merlot. So lovingly grown and produced by my wine geek brothers John and Paul Dunleavy, with my father, Terry. The grapes were carefully picked by hand, aged two years in French Oak barrels, then aged some more, then!! won a Gold Medal in London. WOW! A taste that I won't forget and defined what red wine could be to my inquisitive palate.

So, it's 2013 and I now have some of this Panama Geisha from the Santa Teresa Estate to share the love. We are not charging $15 a cup, but a mere $30 a bag. Why? Because I want people to be able to try it.

This coffee ages well. Keep it air tight and moisture tight in a cool place and sip away on it over the next couple of months. If you want to try it at our Coffee Lab cafe, it's here waiting along with a myriad of other specailty coffees. We only live once, this is Bucket List coffee for sure. We hope you enjoy it as much as we have. So what to say but "Carpe Diem"!  

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From the Nicaragua Cup of Excellence program we bring you outstanding coffee from Luis Emilio Valladarez and La Laguna Farm.

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