FLORENCE, Italy – Ditta Artigianale, a micro roastery directed by Francesco Sanapo, gets three times on the podium of Italian Barista Championship. Thanks to specialty coffees freshly roasted and chosen from among the best small producers in the world, the fundamental feature for the “specialty coffee brand”, Charlotte Malaval (23 years old, coming from Aix-en-Provence) won for the second year straight the French Barista Championship with a Finca Maputo “Typica” from Ecuador.
Francesco Masciullo (24 years old, from Lecce) confirms his third position at the Italian Barista Championship, competing with a coffee from Colombia, a new botanical variety, born in a lab, whose fruits are dried out directly on the tree.
Jessica Sartiani (29 years old from Florence) , at her debut, ranked third at the Italian Brewers Championship with an Ethiopian coffee coming from Cooperativa Duromina, the result of a solidarity project, where a no profit american invested in a little community supplying it with all the needs necessary to enrich its product.
Moreover, Sartiani competed with a “Woodneck”, a drip extraction method, whose filter is made of fabric, to respect the environment.
All the winners were trained by the team of Caffè Corsini – ScuolaMasterBar; at the moment, at the academy, Nikos Kanakaris is training for the Greek Barista Championship Finals on february 14th in Athens.
The champion’s coffees are available for sale on the online shop www.dittaartigianale.it, and it’s possible to taste them at the bar with the same name, located in Florence, in the historic center of the city, in via dei Neri 32r. Here are the interviews by the three champions, which recount their experiences.
Charlotte Malaval says: “ I have the privilege to work with Francesco since two years now. It is really thanks to him if I have the chance to live this beautiful adventure today.
He pushed me to compete in 2015 – telling me it could only be a great experience no matter the result… and he was completely right… Since this time all my preparations has been a fantastic learning process – making my passion for coffee exploding day after day – realizing how deep is the worth of this wonderful product.
And this year we had the honor to welcome other members in our team: Amanda Juris – Hidenori Izaki & also Roukiat Delrue who helps a lot for nationals.
You cannot imagine how intense & rewarding is this experience for me, I’m so grateful and proud to had the privilege to work with these persons that I admire and respect a lot!
And I’m so glad it can continues all the way to Dublin!
Every second I spent with them is a total blast of knowledge – high skills & passion.. All of this achievement is thanks to them. I couldn’t get 1% of this without a team like this around me. Their generosity has been limitless.
I’m also so grateful that Ditta Artigianale allow me again to win the national competition thanks to their amazing coffees.
Preparing this competition was again such a wonderful experience – and we build again something totally different. 2016 nationals – we decided to compare the main role of the barista as a power of suggestion – driving the customer to the main goal: the emotion of coffee tasting – so we show how the barista can influence the customer experience through flavor descriptors – calibration – revealing whole meanings and creating contexts.
For this sensory-emotional experience we choose to use a washed Typica from Ecuador. Ditta Artigianale perfectly represent the values I want to stand for – and competiting with this coffee is the perfect example. It’s a fully washed Typica from Ecuador.
Very clean and complex, but with this incredible sweetness that you’re not gettin that often in your espresso cup. It represent exactly the cup I’m in love with! At the end I choose this coffee. First of al because it’s tasting amazing, but also because is what I want to promote in our speciality coffee industry: a great stunning, but easy cup. It is a real responsibility as an ambassador to promote speciality coffee and I think we have to be very careful regarding the values we want to defend and share”.
Francesco Masciullo, third place at the Italian Barista Championship 2016, said: “it’s a big feeling to get on the podium for the second year straight. I trained for around four months, everyday in a room training with the support of Ditta Artigianale and Caffè Corsini’s MasterBar school.
I competed with a new botanical variety, born in a lab from two different botanical varities existing in nature, which helps to fight back some of the diseases which attack the plant. It’s called Castiglio, it comes from Colombia, from Finca El Mirador.
Its principal features are the sweetness and the acidity which develops early on, combined with the balsamic feelings of the aftertaste. I was fascinated by the story: it’s a variety created in laboratory, and the novelty resides in the dry out process which is used for the drupe, a process happening directly on the tree.
When the drupe is dried put, it’s collected, it’s decorticated and then the green coffee is obtained. The balsamic and spicy aromas have been enhanced using three different aromatic herbs, like lemonated thyme, marjoram and rosemary.”
The last words come from Jessica Sartiani, third place at the Italian Brewers Championship 2016: “I was competing for my first time. It’s been great. I trained everyday, after work, I was more nervous initially instead of later on and at the time of my presentation I simply told to myself: ‘here we are! Let’s go!’. In ten minutes I had to introduce a filter extracted coffee.
I brought a Woodneck with me, a drip style extraction method, with a filter made of fabric. It’s pretty uncommon. I also searched for a different filter, coming from the States, completely organic, scentless and tasteless, with a porosity which allowed me to get a richer extraction of the oils, which means fats and sugar that enrich the cup.
I brought this method with me because I think that it’s important to talk a little bit about ecology. The method with the fabric filter may help us with the environment.
I chose an ethiopian coffee, coming from an area which has always been underrated, and its workers underpayed, because basically they didn’t have enough resources to build the adequate structures they needed to process the coffee.
They’ve been using the natural coffee for generations, and like almost all of the natural coffees, they have the problem that they ferment, and then rot.
This kind of cooperative, instead, has been helped by an american no profit which invested in fermentations tanks to wash the coffee, and the final product is extraordinary.
I really liked the idea of growth and development of an entire region.
Their name is, in facts, Duromina, which means “To improve our life”. The best thing out of this experience was to put myself to test, and to overcome my fears. I feel that after this experience I have so much more to give and so I’m really happy about it.”
