For Longtime Washington Wine Exec, Coffee’s the New Cabernet
Eight years ago, Robin Pollard was stepping into big shoes. She had just been elected to serve as the executive director of the Washington Wine Commission, one of the most powerful and longest standing coalitions of winemakers in the country.
Ms. Pollard would serve as executive director for six years, and would see the Commission grow in size by nearly 200 percent. But Pollard soon found herself fascinated by the parallels between wine and coffee. Living and working with partner Chris Camarda of Andrew Will Winery, here was a new outlet for both Pollard’s and Camarda’s appreciation of land and climate expressed in beverage.
A chance reading of a home roasting article led Pollard to start buying green coffee beans online. She purchased two small home roasters, and quickly wore them out.
So Pollard retired from the Wine Commission and bought a Diedrich roaster. Since the fall of 2012 she has been working from her home on Vashon Island, roasting Pollard Coffee in five-pound batches and looking for feedback from many of the wine people with whom she first developed a love of the complexities of drink.
In spite of coffee and wine’s similarities and their prominence in the Northwest, Pollard found that few of her wine friends had any detailed knowledge of the coffee they drank. “I have several friends who said, you know, I drink coffee in the morning to wake up but I really don’t know that much about it,” Pollard says. “So it’s been fun to try different blends and beans on them, and I’ve got several of them hooked.” She laughs. “In a good way.”
Armed with feedback from across industry borders, Pollard has developed her roast profile to showcase the terroir so many people appreciate in good wine. She sources beans through a farmer-direct trader in Oakland, Calif., and focuses much of her energy on single-origin blends that capture the strengths of a particular region the way a stellar single-vineyard wine does. Her roasts tend toward medium, and her Kitenge beans from East Africa are a particular treasure.
“I am pleased with the fact that a number of my customers are winemakers or people associated with the wine industry, particularly given they have excellent palates,” she says.
“[Robin has] been able to translate our desires into a specific roast and blend,” says Ben Smith, owner and winemaker at Cadence Winery and one of Pollard’s top fans. “We have found no other roaster willing to experiment so deeply for us.”
Robin Pollard’s story is an indication of the increasing overlap between Northwest beverage industries. Even as she looks to grow her coffee business, she maintains close connections in the wine industry and will plant a small vineyard of her own in the spring. Maybe you’ve started looking into something as simple as coffee supplier Birmingham (if you’re looking to start a coffee business in this area of the UK) to make a move into pursuing your dream of starting a coffee business. It all takes time, but once you get to where you want to be, hopefully, you’ll make a success out of it, just like Robin did.
“Just like wine, [coffee] is largely a people business and it is gratifying making new friends, bringing enjoyment in the form of a cup or glass,” she says. “It is certainly a boost to my confidence when they say my coffee beans are very good.”
