About
Two people,three chapters,one question.
Not Just Coffee is a traveling coffee project. We go to places where coffee is grown, stay long enough to be useful, document what we find, and taste everything we're offered.
With our hosts · Chat Chai Farm, Northern Thailand
How it started
Did you ever think how many people worked for the cup of coffee you're drinking?
How it started
Not Just Coffee began as a journey — literally. During our honeymoon we decided to travel across Thailand by car, from Phuket in the south all the way to the far north. For a month we moved slowly, camping in different places and exploring the landscape.
One day in Chiang Mai we found a coffee that immediately caught our attention. We asked where it came from, and whether it was possible to visit the farm.
That visit happened during Songkran. We were in Pai, waiting to be picked up by a 4x4 that would take us up the mountain, and everyone around us was playing with water for the festival. On the ride back down, people were still celebrating, throwing water as we passed through the villages. We sat in the back of the truck, getting soaked and laughing the whole way.
What we do now
Since that first trip we have made it a point to visit coffee farms wherever we travel. We visited farms in Sumatra, and we are documenting farms in Brazil now.
Each place offers a different perspective on how coffee is grown, processed, and understood by the people who give their lives to it. We travel, we document, we taste — and eventually we would like to import.
Natalia
Aric
Natalia & Aric
Natalia
Natalia has a professional background in coffee, working in the industry in Russia: tasting, evaluating, and understanding the science behind it. In professional cupping a coffee is assessed carefully as it cools — aroma, acidity, sweetness, balance, body.
That way of tasting became the foundation of the whole Not Just Coffee concept.
Aric
Aric is a web developer and entrepreneur who helped bring the project to life, building the website and the digital experience around it.
Since meeting Natalia he has been learning coffee steadily, and has become an enthusiast of the ritual itself: slowing down, brewing carefully, and noticing how different coffees express themselves in the cup.
Contact
Write to us
One address for producers, roasters and anyone who wants to send us somewhere.