Dear Coffee Lover,
As the holiday season approaches, please remember us here at Thanksgiving Coffee Company for some of your gift giving and holiday mealtime purchases.
Imagine yourself at one end of the coffee value chain enjoying the fine flavor of a coffee produced 10,000 miles away by small-scale farmers, their family and community. We at Thanksgiving are the stewards of a fair economic system that ensures your purchases will support good things all across the value chain. Our system is for many, a shining light, a model to emulate. We are fund-raisers, the economic engine, so to speak, for small villages around the world. Economic justice, not charity, is what brings pride into a person's life. Through our business you can walk across the oceans on a bridge of hope and love, a bridge created just for you by farmers who depend on Thanksgiving Coffee, and by those of you that love a great cup of coffee. This year let us use coffee to shower our friends with love. There is magic inside each package, only you can let it out.
Wishing you good health and happiness this holiday season,
Paul Katzeff
Holiday Blend
High in the mountain mist of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, Byron Corrales and his family produce one of the most unique coffees in the world. This year, to brighten your holiday celebrations, we are offering Byron’s exquisite Maracaturra varietal in a delicate, sweetly floral, and lively light roast.
Byron is a fourth-generation coffee farmer, leader in the cooperative movement in Nicaragua, and a pioneer in applying biodynamic farming techniques to the production of coffee. He coaxes refined character and sweetness from his coffee by using over a dozen organic compost preparations to supply nutrients specific to each stage of his trees' growth and production. Working like a choreographer, Byron integrates these applications of fertilizer with lunar cycles, rainfall, and the seasons' shifts, and by his own admission, speaks regularly with his coffee trees.
Maracaturra is his pride and joy: this coffee variety is so rare that it is only found on his family farm and a few neighboring farms. Easily recognizable by its large, gracefully-rounded beans, Maracaturra tastes distinctively of sweet fruit, fresh nuts, and lush tropical flowers. It’s our pleasure to share this gift with you and yours: equal parts gift of nature, farmer’s craft, and roaster’s pride, this coffee is sure to brighten your days and nights.
(Get free UPS Ground shipping on orders of 5 or more Holiday Blend packages by typing "celebrate" in the promotional code field during checkout)
California Academy of Sciences
It is with great pride that I share the news that we are the exclusive suppliers of coffees to the newly-opened California Academy of Sciences (CAS) in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The CAS is one of the most important and unique accounts we are now serving. It is a working museum with 300 full-time scientists, research fellows, academics and teachers. A trip to The Academy will blow your mind as it will do for the expected 2 million yearly visitors.
Our coffee is served throughout The Academy and it is brewed perfectly for two reasons:
1. World famous chef, Charles Phan of Slanted Door, fame oversees the entire kitchen operation.
2. Our Director of Coffee, Ben Corey-Moran, does ongoing training with the staff on the finer points of coffee brewing and the craft of espresso drink preparation.
Ben and Thanksgiving Coffee co-founder Paul Katzeff created their signature blend early one foggy northern California morning. The blend is inspired by the syrupy sweet sun-dried Ethiopian Sidama, a wonderful coffee that Ben discovered during his trip to Ethiopia last February. A Nicaraguan coffee from our friends in Aranjuez contributes a nutty sweetness that has become the hallmark of many of our blends. The Academy Blend is currently sold in packages at the three Academy stores under a private label and it will be offered on our online store in the near future.
We are proud to be a part of the Academy of Sciences mission to educate its visitors about sustainability and how we all can become a part of the solution instead of part of the problem. See you at the museum.
O, The Oprah Magazine
How many people have found inspiration, guidance, or hope in Oprah’s work? It’s remarkable when you consider the breadth of her community through her magazine’s readership, her TV audience, book club, and her many philanthropic networks. Her persistence in bringing a sense of possibility to so many lives is also incredibly moving.
So naturally we were thrilled when freelance writer Charles London called us several months back interested in writing a piece for “O” on our work with the Peace Kawomera Cooperative in Uganda. Now, in the August edition, on page 134, the story of Mirembe Kawomera "Delicious Peace" Coffee has spread from California, to Uganda, and out to Oprah’s world.
“Pass the word: peace is percolating in Uganda, thanks to an amazing farmer-musician-activist who started a collective of Jews, Muslims, and Christians that grows some of the richest, best-tasting coffee in the world.”
Please visit our blog for a link to the article online. The article ends with these words from our friend and the Cooperative’s founder. “It is simple to cause peace,” JJ explains. “We use what we have to make our enemies into our friends. You don’t need PhDs. We have coffee.”