Papua New Guinea - Baroida Estate

Ben Miller, Temple Coffee Roastery Manager here, to tell you a little bit about our August Roaster’s Choice offering. I spent the last six months of 2022 in Papua New Guinea, where I had the opportunity to get to know the producers of this month’s offering. 

 

Nichol Colbran, originally from New Zealand, has been living in PNG since 1963, when he was 9 years old! The property, which Nichol now runs, was first purchased by his father. It’s over 200 hectares of land and sits between 1700 and 1850 MASL in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. They are one of the last remaining plantation style coffee producers, which is to say they grow, harvest, wash, dry and export all themselves. This affords them the ability to control the quality at every step of the  process and maintain the highest standards of quality control. All this results in the highest quality coffee coming out of the island nation.

 

I first met Nichol about a week after moving to PNG. I was living by the coast in a port town, working to export and he was one of the producers providing the coffee. We took a three hour trip up into the mountains to visit him and his team. It is safe to say that Nichol and I got on from the start. Nichol, you see, loved to argue and very quickly learned that I wasn’t going to roll over and was glad to push back. After that, I would get frequent invites to come up and visit. We’d tour the farm, talk coffee and argue about anything under the sun.

 

And it is an impressive operation. Over 200 hectares of land and he and his team could tell me everything about every plot. When was it planted? When was it last fertilized? What day was this section picked? When will it need to be picked again? They had these answers ready at the drop of a hat. This is all made possible by the respect Nichol has from his employees. Not always a given in New Guinea, the workers trust and adhere to instructions, making the running of such a large estate possible. 

 

Papua New Guinea is a unique origin that is not as common to see on shelves. We are super excited to bring this unique, delightful coffee to our Roaster’s Choice program. We hope you enjoy this superb coffee, from a less well known origin. 

 

Click here to shop or learn more about this Roaster's Choice offering.