Celebrating Cups of Joe
While the Sazerac was being stormed at the Roosevelt
Hotel this Friday, another beverage landmark in the city celebrated the opening
of a strong second year.
The two-day NOLA Coffee Festival has returned to the
Morial Convention Center for a caffeinated deep dive into the flavors and
industry of the world's most popular jolt of energy. Visitors to the event are
treated to educational presentations, barista competitions, music, and endless
free samples of the best coffee found anywhere, right in the heart of the port
and river that has continued to supply so much of America's coffee since the
1800s.
The scent of new carpeting from the Convention Center's
multimillion-dollar renovation project greeted attendees before giving way to
the aroma of roast coffee beans from the convention floor. The roster of exhibitors
ranged in scale from international mainstays like Folgers, which conducts a
good deal of operations in the New Orleans region to Louisiana mainstay
roasters like PJs and French Market Coffee, as well as independent enterprises including
Cherry Coffee Roasters and the Current Crop Roast Shop home roasting business
on Magazine Street. The second year of the event has also made a strong push to
include the broad trappings of café fare from all around, including
representations (and samples) ranging from Belgian waffles brought from
California and coffee whiskey made in Kentucky to lemonade from Baton Rouge and
handcrafted thermal mugs made in Metairie.
Sponsored activations broke down the statistics and
logistics of worldwide Arabica coffee production, weekend-long latte art
competitions offer some of the most intense competition the convention center
had seen since
Pokémon this summer, and guests could take photos with an
appropriately-energetic coffee bean mascot.
Upstairs, educational and industry panels broke down
everything from the history of coffee in New Orleans to the preparation of
artisan Turkish coffee for baristas. A panel of influential women
decisionmakers in the regional coffee industry included candid stories and
business insights from brands including titan of industry PJs, Onyx Coffee Labs
(whose impressive LED display is a highlight of the show floor and whose coffee
packaging feels more akin to Versace than your nearest donut shop), and Westfeldt
Brothers, whose sponsored music stage included a weekend lineup of acts often
overlapping with the local performances at Covington's Haven Coffee.
Friday, September 27 is something of an industry day
for the event, while Saturday the 28th is expecting a wider swath of local
visitors. Don't expect to be able to sleep after so much caffeine, but being
awake all night might, at least, fit alongside the Vampire Weekend happening a
few rooms down at the same Convention Center (plenty of folks are drinking
plenty of coffee, but I'd prefer not to ask what the vampires might be drinking).
For more information, see the NOLA Coffee Festival
website. For a full list of festival exhibitors, see
here.
