Light Roast
$22.00 | 12 oz $23.00
Beautiful, unique, and challenging only begin to tell the story of coffee in Papua New Guinea. Despite the immense challenges, Nichol Colbran and his team at Baroida produce exceptional coffee. We consider Baroida's coffee to be the best in Papua New Guinea and, possibly, the entire Pacific. This impeccably curated lot, selected specifically for Counter Culture, features notes of molasses, golden raisin, and spice.
Baroida is our featured coffee for the month of January.
Typica, Bourbon, Arusha
Washed
1,600–1,865 meters
Through mid-March 2022
The highlands of Papua New Guinea are so remote that outsiders did not venture there until the early 1900s. That remoteness meant that the country as a whole was a late-comer to the production of coffee. While the small country of Papua New Guinea is renowned for its rich cultural diversity—the country boasts more than 800 languages and indigenous tribes—it is also increasingly becoming recognized for its exceptional coffee, the best of which comes from the Baroida farm.
Baroida was founded by Ben Colbran and his wife Norma in the early 1960s. Up until 1965, with the help of the local Tairora tribe, Baroida mostly grew sweet potatoes and other subsistence crops. The farm is located outside the town of Kainantu in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, an area characterized by rolling grasslands with a climate and conditions well suited for growing coffee. In 1965, with those conditions in mind, Ben followed the government’s encouragement to plant coffee. Baroida became one of the first coffee farms in the area and served as a source of seeds to many of the struggling growers in the area.
Ben owned Baroida until 1979, when he sold the land to a trust, leaving his son Nichol in charge. Nichol oversaw the operation until 1991, when he left to work on other projects. Six years later, Nichol bought back the land, but found that the farm had fallen into disrepair in the short time he was gone. With the help of some veteran Baroida farmhands, Nichol got the farm back on track In addition to Nichol, there are now more than two dozen key employees with years of experience who make this high quality coffee possible.
In 2009, Nichol fundamentally changed how the coffee was sold. He switched from using large commercial exporters—who would often just blend Baroida's amazing coffee into large undistinguished lots—to exporting the coffee himself. This shift resulted in Baroida becoming one of the most highly regarded farms in the entire country thanks to a focus on traceability, lot selection, and refined processing. For the last few years, Nichol has honed in on the way coffee is dried, milled, and exported. Nichol also returned to working with an exporting partner so that he can focus solely on coffee quality. The exceptional quality of this lot is especially rewarding, given our years of collaborating with this hardworking team through all of their challenges. We couldn't be more grateful for and impressed by their dedication to producing the best coffee possible.
