(photos by Kyle Glanville)

I take my coffee pretty seriously. So the idea of some of the most respected names in the coffee business—who, under normal circumstances, consider one another competition—coming together to work towards a common goal is very interesting to me. As a consumer I’m always trying to get my hands on really delicious coffee. As an enthusiast, I’m constantly annoying my local baristas with questions. As an advocate—well, my advocacy work to date has consisted mostly of caffeinated rants to friends. But a few months ago, the opportunity to explore that a little deeper presented itself.

In December, my friend Stephen Morrissey, who works at Intelligentsia, called with a crazy idea. In 2010, they provided coffee services for the TED conference in hopes of spreading the word about really good coffee. Stephen also happened to be the 2008 world barista champ; he knows about really good coffee. His idea for this year: rather than just serving coffee, the goal would be education. Rather than employees of a single company, the bars would be staffed by some of the best baristas in the business from all around the world. Rather than beans from one roaster, various skilled and talented roasters would be contributing the best they had to offer. This wouldn’t be advertising for a single company, it would be advertising for coffee itself. But does anyone really need to learn about something as ubiquitous as coffee? And would something this weird even be possible? Turns out the short answer to both questions is yes.

In fact, the whole reason something this weird needs
to exist is to help with that education. It’s worth noting that
coffee—at just about every level, from farm to
cup—is a mystery to most of the millions who consume
it each day.

For example: coffee grows on a tree and
is the product of a cherry. Each cherry yields two “beans”, the
seed of the fruit. For the best farms, each tree, spaced meters
apart, will yield only a pound of roasted, defect-free and
delicious coffee. After the coffee is planted and matures, it
endures a vast and complex chain of custody during which any
weak link can destroy all the intrinsic qualities the coffee
has to offer. Only the smallest fraction of coffee grown on the
planet can be considered “specialty quality,” and few people
have the pleasure of ever tasting it.

But that’s just scratching the surface. We’re hoping
to dig in much deeper. Who’s we? When Stephen first told me
about this crazy idea, he also explained that he was pulling
together an all-star team, inlcuding Kyle
Glanville, Brent
Fortune and Peter
Giuliano— all with the shared goal of
producing an amazing coffee experience for TED 2011.

And all would be associated not with any single
coffee company, but rather the top names in the business all
working together to show off not just how amazing coffee could
actually be, and why it’s important for people to know what
happens with it before it reaches their cup. At the TED event,
yes, but also well beyond after that to broader audiences.

Stephen asked me to join them, and before long Tim
Williams, Brian
Jones and Alex
Bogusky would get roped in as well. Yes, that Alex
Bogusky.

We knew what we wanted to do, but not what we
wanted to call it. Coincidentally, Alex had just announced the
launch of Common,
a new collaborative brand that would be rethinking capitalism
and injecting some social responsibility. This made way too
much sense, and almost immediately Coffee
Common was born.

Just this weekend, coffeecommon.com
was launched and the coffees we’ll be presenting at TED
next week have been finalized.

For the few of you
readers who will be attending TED in person, some of the top
baristas in the world will be on hand to expertly prepare one
of the following:

Intelligentsia Coffee Roasters:
Abangakurushwa, Rwanda
Counter
Culture Coffee: Buziraguhindwa,
Burundi
Stumptown Coffee Roasters:
Loja, Ecuador
Madcap Coffee:
Los Lobos, Costa Rica
Terroir
Coffee: Mamuto, Kenya
Ritual
Coffee Roasters: La Orquidea,
Colombia
Square Mile Coffee:
Villa Loyola, Colombia
Has
Bean Coffee: Finca Machacamarca De Berengula,
Bolivia

For everyone else, we’re going to be putting up a ton
of information, photos and videos, on the site over the coming
days, as well as after TED.

We’re looking at this as
the first of many awesome steps Common Coffee will be taking.
I’ll be guest-blogging about it here from time to time as well.

We’ve got some amazing stuff planned. I am confident
that we’re about to change everything you think you know about
coffee. For the better. It’s going to be awesome.

(photos by Kyle
Glanville)