Carlos and Edwin Garcia Martin

As posted here Finca Vista Hermosa lost their farm manager and his son recently. Travelling back to the farm with the salary for the farm workers road bandits murdered Carlos and Edwin. It's a terrible tragedy and it has touched the coffee community greatly. Coffeegeek has written an article about Carlos after talking with Edwin Martinez of FVH: Click here to read it

Carlos' wife, Juana is now a widow and left with 11 children. Edwin has set up a fund to support the family left behind. If you would like to help out you can donate directly here (secure online payment)

Lastly I just want to link to a comment from one of our readers, Neil, that we really appreciated.

Pictures and more from the Grand Opening

The first week came and went. Klaus went to Portugal two days after opening and then got a cold. Casper has broken his right hand in a (non-drunken) fall. Peter's been roasting like crazy. And Linus has been assembling the last bits and pieces. All in all a bit chaotic, but now we seem to have settled in nicely.

As promised, here's some pictures from the opening day.




We opened at 7.30 (our usual opening time) on Friday the 15th and began the day by giving away free coffees to the morning commuters on Jagtvej. It was really nice to see how happy this made people and we always enjoy a chance to talk about our coffee philosophy (perhaps coffee obsession is a more appropriate term).




During the day we had lots of visitors come by. Friends, colleagues, relatives as well as people who just wondered what the last couple of weeks noise had all been about.

When we closed at 1800 hours the place was full of happy coffee drinking people and we all felt like celebrating that our first day had been successful.




At seven o'clock free-lance barista Mikkel Otto showed up for the general rehearsal of his presentation for the Danish Barista Championship. He will be using our espresso blend and is training like a maniac for the competition. It was great to see his performance and taste his drinks. There are more pictures of his presentation on our Flickr here but we don't wanna give away Mikkel Ottos presentation before the championship, so it's only a sneak preview.




The crowd (it was completely packed in the shop) made sure Mikkel Otto got his nerves tested and a team of judged scrutinized his every little move.




We all had a great time, although, considering we were all opening up the shop again saturday morning, we probably shouldn't have had champagne, beer and rum on an empty stomach...

Thanks to everyone who came by! We really enjoyed seeing you there and hope you'll all come back.

A great loss

On Saturday last week Edwin Martinez of Finca Vista Hermosa told us some very difficult news. Their farm manager, Carlos Garcia Martin, and one of his sons, Edwin Garcia Martin, passed away.

We never got to meet Carlos or Edwin as our first visit to FVH is planned to take place in about a month. But we know the importance of the work of the farm manager and from Edwin's own blog we can tell they will be greatly missed.

Aaron Blanco met Carlos on a visit to the farm, and he has posted a very heart-felt post about the tragedy here.

Our condolences and thoughts are with Carlos' and Edwin's family and friends.

Yes, we're open

The grand opening day went very well. Lots and lots of people stopped by. Politiken's iByen Online featured us here which certainly helped creating awareness together with mentions on various forums, blogs and local papers.
Now, we're trying to catch our breath again. I'm off to Portugal for three days of coffee work shops, which certainly doesn't give us more time to post on this blog. So please be patient. We will return soon with pictures from the opening day including a sneak preview of barista Mikkel Otto's awesome performance for the Danish Barista championship and the impromptu partying after closing the first day.
Thanks to everyone who made this first two days such a great experience for us!