VIENNA, Austria – A total of 78 exhibitors, over 7000 visitors over three event days and over 600 types of coffee – these are the key figures of the 8th Vienna Coffee Festival, where guests were able to find out about the latest trends relating to beans. The numerous side events paid tribute to the fact that the coffee boom continues to grow and grow. For the first time, each day of the event had its own motto, celebrating the diversity of coffee.
Günther Gapp, organizer of the event for eight years: “Coffee is the market with the third largest growth worldwide. And the fact that today’s visitors are so knowledgeable about coffee is certainly also due to the festivals that are held around the world. Today the knowledge of coffee qualities, the processing chain and the different growing areas of the visitors is enormous”.
And because Vienna is officially known as the “World’s coolest coffee event” in the world of festivals, the crème de la crème was also present in the federal capital: For example, the first Austrian roaster world champion Felix Teiretzbacher from St. Pölten, who recently won the title of the SCA Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) in Milan. But also the Italian latte art world champion 2019, Manuela Fensore, who showed her art as part of the “Latte Karate” throwdown.
“We’re just at the beginning!”
“When you consider that there were starters from 30 different nations at the World Championships in Milan, you realize how incredibly important Felix’s victory is,” agrees Günter Stölner, organizer of the festival together with Günther Gapp.
Teiretzbacher is a representative of the “Specialty Coffee Scene”, which has been strengthening the global power of the bean for more than ten years. Which was also reflected in the interest of visitors to the festival. Gapp: “From cupping and roasting to making filter coffee, from preparations with spirits to syrups – this year for the first time we presented the entire spectrum that coffee entails.”
The Italian Alberto Terzetti, represented at the festival with the Simonelli and Victoria Arduino brands, is also certain: “The world of coffee has developed enormously in recent years and decades – and we are just at the beginning. I like to compare it with wine: there, too, there is a lot of questioning, tasting and tinkering. This is also the case with coffee today.”
Kitchen, Art, Coffeehouse-Flair
The supporting program of the festival also showed how broad the diversity actually is: This year, for the first time, each day of the event had its own motto, Juan Amador, Austria’s first and only 3-star Michelin chef, gave an insight at the “Coffee & Food” day the ingredient coffee in the kitchen (“We experimented with pickling the beans in oil so that they can release their aroma very slowly”) and served hake with coffee beurre blanc at the Lavazza stand. Of course, the traditional Viennese coffee house could not be missing on the festival site, where you could not only breathe in the flair so typical of the coffee house with a melange or prolonged drink, but also with a game of carom.
Visitors also got a taste for it in the newly designed Art Corner, which for the first time came up with a world premiere: The African artist Kristy Carlson showed a series of photographs and portraits as part of her “Before+Now” exhibition, which depicts the life of coffee farmers in their native Burundi.
Vienna Coffee Festival 2023
One thing is already fixed: the 9th Vienna Coffee Festival will take place again next year in Vienna’s Marx Halle. In September 2023 everything in Austria’s capital revolves around the bean.
