Visit George Howell's blog (www.blog.terroircoffee.com or simply click the image above) to see what's happening in the coffee world, as well as the latest on Terroir Coffee and George himself. George spent his first thirteen years in one of those New Jersey towns where one is always dimly aware of the looming towers of New York City on the horizon. They seemed to him like beckoning gates to a vast and unknown world. In 1958, his family moved to Mexico City, where he briefly attended a British school before settling into the Lycée Franco-Mexicain. In the mid-1960s, George studied art history and modern European literature at Yale University. By then he was already developing a missionary spirit for artistic/aesthetic causes. In the early 1970s, he fell in love with the art of the Huichol Indians of Mexico and threw himself into exhibiting and curating their work in California. George’s goal was to promote the expressive vitality and original spatial mastery of certain Huichol artists; he hoped this would lift them out of that unfortunate appellation “folk artists,” which reinforced their anonymity and belittled their pre-Columbian religion (miraculously still intact). George is proud to have contributed to their finally being exhibited in Mexico City’s Museum of Modern Art in 1986. In 2000, he donated a spectacular 4’ x 8’ yarn painting by the celebrated Huichol artist, Jose Benitez Sanchez, to Mexico City’s Museum of Anthropology, where it can be seen today. By 1974, George and his wife Laurie had two children with another on the way. Exhibiting art hardly paid the rent. They left their hometown, Berkeley, in search of some undefined opportunity in Boston. Soon after arriving in Boston in 1974, George discovered he was a frustrated, spoiled Berkeley coffee drinker (Peet’s and a number of lighter roast competitors were already thriving by the time the Howells left). Boston was a desert of stale, brown-painted wooden pellets and liquefied ground saw dust. George was suddenly transformed into a coffee missionary and The Coffee Connection was born. For the next 19 years, George slowly built up The Coffee Connection to 24 company-owned stores exhibiting Huichol art on their walls and emphasizing coffee as a noble beverage worthy of being in the same league as fine wine. By 1994, however, George came to feel that the time-consuming demands of financing, operations, and marketing in an acceleratingly competitive environment were divorcing him from what really gave him pleasure: his family (by then, six children and three grandchildren) and the pursuit of great coffee. That year George sold The Coffee Connection to Starbucks Coffee Company. The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) awarded George its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 in recognition of his critical role as a pioneering standard bearer of quality coffee. After selling The Coffee Connection™ to Starbucks, George was free to resume his coffee education in new ways. He continued to travel to coffee-producing countries (Colombia, India, Sumatra, Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru), offering his services as a coffee quality consultant. Beginning in 1997, he worked for the United Nations and the International Coffee Organization (ICO), creating models of economic sustainability for coffee farmers. This project led to his conceiving and co-founding the Cup of Excellence™ in 1999, a program designed to help break the commodity/price cycle in the specialty-coffee industry. You can learn more about this innovative program by clicking Cup of Excellence™. George left the Cup of Excellence™ in 2002 to re-center his efforts on developing the quality-coffee market in the United States. The George Howell Coffee Company™ represents a return for George to his roots: identifying, roasting and discovering the highest quality coffees possible. His Terroir™ line of single-origin coffees is the next step in this unfolding odyssey as he presses to extend the limits of quality coffee standards. Terroir™ is based on the simple premise that the apex of coffee quality is represented by single estates, be they farms or carefully focused cooperatives. Experienced wine aficionados understand the concept of “terroir” well—that ineffable combination of region, climate, and craftsmanship that give a wine its unique qualities. This concept is well established in Europe, where it has spread to olive oil, scotch, cheeses, and other fine food products. George continues to travel to coffee-producing areas to personally identify and source these rare finds and has even begun to arrange for very special small lots directly from producers, hand graded to his quality specifications. Once a coffee is chosen and acquired, it is re-packaged and stored under special conditions, which halts the naturally accelerating degradation process of raw coffee. A coffee harvested nine months or even two years ago can now taste as if it just came off the farm. This is a Terroir™ world-innovation and, while expensive, it promises to revolutionize the world of quality coffee. Terroir™ coffees are also carefully tested and monitored to ensure their quality does not degrade. As always, George roasts with a light touch, one that does not overpower the coffee but allows it to exhibit its natural sweetness. To date, no other roaster has gone to these lengths for the sake of quality. For George, it is about the thrill of inspiration and about respect—respect for the farmer, both his efforts and results; respect for the coffee, how Terroir™ roasts and packages it; respect for you and your ability to discern a truly exceptional product. George and Laurie Howell took over ownership of Taste Cafe on October 28, 2010. They purchased the cafe from Nikolas Krankl, nationally regarded barista, and a great coffee mind. (All of Boston misses you, Nik!) George has made quite a splash in the coffee world, both locally, and nationally. George's expertise, mixed with the framework Nik put into place, is sure to spell nothing but good things for the local coffee scene... |