RIMINI, Italy – The Seoul Cafe Show, in South Korea, is the scenario chosen to announce the ten finalists of the new edition of Barista & Farmer, the first and only talent show dedicated to quality coffee, created by Francesco Sanapo, multiawarded italian barista champion, in collaboration with Italian Exhibition Group and SIGEP – Salone Internazionale Gelateria Pasticceria, Panificazione Artigianale e Caffè, with the patronage of SCA, Specialty Coffee Association.
The ten participants of the fourth edition of the coffee show, selected by a jury of experts among more than 250 top baristas from all over the world, will be unveiled on the 12th of November at the central arena of the WBC, the World Barista Championship, which is running from the 9th to the 12th of November in South Korea.
The presentation will be supported by a video projection over the main screen of the arena and it will also be streamed over the World Coffee Events channels (https://worldbaristachampionship.org/).
The announcement will be preceded by a series of speeches to provide further informations about the experience that the baristas are going to live in Colombia.
The first to talk will be Francesco Sanapo, the show’s creator and multiawarded italian baristan champion, who will offer a global vision of the project. Environmental sustainability has always been a big part of this show, and has become an even bigger part since the show’s last edition due to the support of Lavazza, among the main partners and sponsors of the talent.
The new edition of the show, in fact, adds to the values of education and competition the one of sustainability.
A real and thorough focus over the matter, which will also answer the question of what it means to make a sustainable coffee, will be provided by Mario Cerutti (Chief Institutional Relations & Sustainability Officer of Lavazza) who will be followed by Max Ochoa (Technical Director Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung Du Brasil), the creator of the ¡Tierra! sustainability project of Lavazza in Brazil, developed in collaboration with Rainforest Alliance ong with the goal of increasing the social and environmental conditions and the production methods of some coffee-producing communities.
One of these communities is the brazilian Lambarì, which hosted the previous edition of Barista & Farmer.
Luigi Morello’s speech (Mumac Academy director, Gruppo Cimbali’s academy for coffee machines) will shed a light over the characteristics of Colombia and its coffee. Lastly, Francesco Sanapo and greek barista Nikolaos Kanakaris, who won the last edition of the show and therefore will be the barista’s tutor in next one, will conclude this series of speeches by announcing the ten finalists of this new edition.
The fourth event promises new content and new features. The participants in Barista & Farmer, all very high-level, will be involved in a comprehensive project that starts with the coffee plantation harvests, includes all the stages of coffee production and the range of technologies used and ends with coffee tasting opportunities and a look at the variety of ways coffee is enjoyed.
They will attend the Barista & Farmer Academy, a special multidisciplinary school where they will follow SCA training modules on agronomy, botanics, raw coffee, coffee roasting and coffee extraction under the direction of Alberto Polojac, along with a large number of other experts with considerable international experience. Work and learning will be interspersed with opportunities for fun and relaxation, with themed games and competitions.
The finalists will be filmed and the videos will be broadcast on www.baristafarmer.com and the talent show’s social networks. A documentary will be made about the event (each year the show is filmed in a different artistic style. See the event’s YouTube channel for the latest documentary). This will illustrate a new approach to the world of coffee, the aim being to disseminate the increasingly global coffee culture (coffee is the second most common drink after water).
Colombia, the country of origin of the fourth event
Colombia is the world’s third exporter of coffee, and has always played a key role in world coffee production, both because of the excellence of its raw materials and because of the small communities of dedicated and passionate coffee producers who often use high-quality, traditional methods.
According to recent figures from the Comitato Italiano Caffè (Italian Coffee Committee), between December 2015 and November 2016 Colombia 12.5 million sacks of green coffee, and between January and September 2016 Italy imported 17.5 million kg (the equivalent of 292,273 sacks) of Columbian green coffee.
In Colombia the Giuseppe and Pericle Lavazza Foundation sustain, in the municipalities of Mesetas, Lejanias and San Juan de Arama, important sustainability projects to provide to the coffee growers all the tools necessary to manage the effects of the climate change and to reintegrate the families of the producers within the territories that, in the last decades, have been struck by huge social crisis.
