From the volcanic slopes of Indonesia to the cloud forests of South America, there’s a whole world of coffee out there waiting to be discovered. And we’re renowned for finding the best the world has to offer – but how exactly?

It’s simple really: we go looking for it. Literally. Our coffee buyers regularly travel the world, because we believe there’s no substitute for personally visiting the coffee farms and cooperatives we buy from. Our globetrotting experts, Mike, Hannah and Rick, look at everything from the quality of the coffee to the living standards of the farming communities. This means we can be sure we’re trading fairly and responsibly, and that our coffees are consistently top quality.

COME OVER TO COFFEE

One of the most important events on the coffee calendar took place in London recently - Caffè Culture, organised by the Speciality Coffee Association of Europe, was crammed from corner to corner with traders, roasters, exporters and coffee farmers. For us, it's the perfect opportunity to catch up with key suppliers and discover potential new ones too.

Having so many of our suppliers in the UK at the same time also gave us a chance to invite them up to Harrogate. After all, visiting the people we work with is fundamental to maintaining strong relationships, but it's good to be able to return the favour.

So we’ve had a lot of visitors in a short space of time. First, it was Daniel and Carlos from Descamex in Mexico, whose ‘pure water process’ decaffeination of the arabica beans we use in our Decaffé ensures it has a smooth, full-bodied flavour - one of the reasons it’s the UK’s most popular decaffeinated ground coffee. We’ve only been working together for a few years now so these visits are an important part of building a long-term partnership. We’re pleased to say they were really impressed with what they saw. Daniel told us: "Your facilities are state of the art – and you have a great team!"

The very next day our coffee buyers played host to Alejandro and Giancarlo from Virmax in Colombia, who supply the arabica beans for both our ground Colombian High Andes and our Excelso beans. The coffee we buy comes from Fairtrade certified cooperatives made up of many small farms, so Virmax play a vital role because they help these farms work together to achieve a consistent quality - and those shared high standards are what enable us to provide such reliably excellent coffee. "Taylors has grown without compromising on quality, which is very special," said Alejandro. "All the growers we represent understand that, and being recognised for doing a better job counts for a lot."

Shortly after the event, we also met up with Bridget from Dormans, who supply the top quality Kenyan coffee that goes into our classic Café Imperial blend and our Kenya Nyeri beans. The politics in Kenya can be very complicated, and when this is combined with increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, it makes strong, sustainable relationships with our suppliers even more important. Dormans are one of Kenya's biggest exporters, and we’ve been working with them for a long time. Our Head of Coffee Mike met Bridget 18 years ago - when they were both just starting out, in fact. Thanks to our mutual passion for quality, it's a partnership that continues to deliver great coffee.