We offer the best in both worlds --
Terroir Select Coffees and MEM Tea Imports

At True Grounds, we know that it's not only atmosphere that makes a great coffeeshop. Our customers come to us in search of a great cup -- whether it be carefully selected coffee brews or delicately dried and steeped fine teas.

OUR COFFEE BREWS

North Italian Roast Style Espresso, Daterra Farm,
A light dark roast in the tradition of Northern Italy (Milan Trieste). As an espresso, it has a floral baby-breathe, almond aroma. The cup is elegant, smooth, of one piece from first contact to aftertaste, honey textured, extra-sweet and lively with a hint of vanilla and refined marzipan. Other brewing methods produce a rich very mellow cup with nutty-chocolate flavors. Daterra Farm has blended 80% yellow catuai with 20% yellow bourbon varieties to produce this exceptionally sweet, full bodied coffee.

Rated 92 points by Kenneth David's Coffee Review, to read the review click here.

La Flor del Cafe (SHB), Antigua
La Flor del Cafe is grown by small farmers in the valley of Antigua and processed at the famous Pastores mill, supervised by the quality manager of the La Minita Estate who flies in regularly from Costa Rica. The 2004 harvest is stunning. Medium to full bodied with very mellow citric notes layered in rich velvety bittersweet chocolate.

Golden Mandheling, Sumatra
Sumatra is legendary for its heavy body and earth-tone flavors. It is a particular favorite of dark roast drinkers. We are offering the real golden Mandheling. Its far superior preparation translates directly into a smoother sweeter aftertaste. We roast this Mandheling slightly darker than our other full flavor roasts to better showcase its syrupy body. Notes of butterscotch with a dash of crushed autumn apples and leaves set off with mellow acidity.

Decaf La Lapa (HB), Atlantic Coast, Costa Rica
This is simply the best, most un-decaffeinated tasting coffee I know of. Sweet, ripe, high-grown Atlantic Coast coffee. Smooth yet lively with marked chocolate flavors mixing with nuts. The aftertaste sweetly disappears.

Decaf Espresso (HB), La Lapa, Costa Rica
Sweet, lively espresso with a heart of dark chocolate. Great for a naturally sweet cappuccino anytime. Not a trace of harshness.

ABOUT THE ROASTER

Terroir Select Coffee was created in early 2004 to forge a new kind of partnership with coffee growers one which recognizes their fundamental role and identity in the production of high quality coffees. We believe that one should not blend truly fine coffees, just like one does not blend fine wines, because they are already complete statements. There has been very little incentive, in terms of remuneration and acknowledgement, for producers to create really great coffees.

Aficionados! You have barely tasted the tip of the potential quality iceberg! Coffee growers remain locked in the commodity matrix because the coffee-roaster tradition has promoted blends as products superior to the sum of their parts meaning the single origin coffees. So, most farmers produce what the market demands: acceptable, large coffee lots for blending. Growers of anonymous coffees-to-be-blended depend for economic sustenance on the goodwill and/or temporal strategies of the buyers market, from giant corporations to Fair Trade. Coffee producers, so far, do not have the market platform for high-craft self-expression.

Coffee has progressed form the flatline-quality graveyard of the 1960 and 70s to the quality trapezoid of todays specialty blend market. This trapezoid now needs to be crowned with great single-source, named coffees to become a quality pyramid for the health of the marketplace, the growers, the growers nations and for our very real pleasure and delight!

Terroir is on the cutting edge of this dawning. We are tiny and, as such, our first goal is to find, to the best of our ability, benchmark quality coffees from single identified sources. This is still a frontier, where great qualities in many countries must be searched for like needles in a haystack. Such coffees are often produced in tiny quantities; transport that assures the quality of these boutique lots does not exist in what is now a consolidated bulk market. We are now flying the coffee to our location when there is any doubt.

My experience, reputation and accumulated good will in the specialty coffee industry is, in no small part, helping us launch Terroir. Even more important is the dedication and quality of the Terroir team; Noel Vega, master roaster extraordinaire since the days of The Coffee Connection, coffee veteran and connoisseur Mark Bishop who runs our education and marketing programs with real inspiration, new-generation coffee-quality student and co-fanatic Peter Lynagh, in charge of quality control, veteran Mike Fitzhugh, our guru of technology, from roasting to espresso machines to packaging, and Alex Hardy, our controller - a far too simple word to describe his multi-tasking efforts who diligently keeps us going in as straight a line as possible. My daughter Jennifer has become a full time student again - and so we welcome James Fraser, who is the new voice cheerfully answering the phone, backing all of us up and providing First Aid in all forms!

OUR TEA SELECTIONS >>