Toast the roast success!
ARTISAN coffee roasters are drinking to their success after lifting a prestigious ‘golden fork’ award.
Marsden-based Dark Woods scooped no fewer than eight awards at the 2019 Great Taste Awards, the highest number by a coffee company.
After securing the eight awards the company was put forward for a ‘golden fork’ for Best Northern Product for its Panama La Huella Coffee – and won that too.
The award was made at the Guild of Fine Food’s award ceremony at the Intercontinental Hotel in Hyde Park Corner, London.
In total there were 12,772 entries into Great Taste Awards this year and competition was tough.
The natural La Huella coffee has become a best seller for Dark Woods since they teamed up with producers Café de Panama in 2016.
Dark Woods director Paul MeikleJanney said he was delighted with the awards and added: “Our coffee supply and relationship with La Huella started by pure chance.
“Initially, we had bought an award-winning micro-lot of their coffee from a coffee competition called the ‘Best of Panama’, hosted by the Speciality Coffee Association of Panama.
“Within a few days of buying this auction lot, the founder of La Huella Café de Panama, Pedro Moss, got in touch.
“He talked passionately of his desire to put a face and name to a selection of coffees being grown by a small band of hard-working, quality driven farmers who traditionally had no direct access to the international coffee market and to coffee roasters.
“Rather than their coffee cherries being sold to middle-men and bulk blended, Pedro would hand select the very best of the harvest, process and mill the coffees.
“He ensures that every micro-lot always carries the name of the farmer and that the additional premiums for the coffee are shared.
“We’ve been working in direct partnership ever since that phone call, and Pedro and his team select a bespoke range of coffees for Dark Woods from each annual harvest.”
The beans are processed in a ‘natural’ way which gives the coffee an “extra sweet fruitiness, combined with a rich body and chocolatey flavour.” Only small 5kg batches are roasted at any one time.
Dark Woods Coffee, based at Holme Mills, West Slaithwaite Road, is an independent, speciality coffee business, started in late 2013 by three friends.
The aim was to combine a wholesale roasting business with an onsite barista training school, retail outlet and pop-up café.
Dark Woods supply coffee to many of the best Yorkshire cafes, restaurants and hotels, but are also the coffee roasters for the likes of Fortnum & Mason and Liberty in London.