Posted by TheShot on 18 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Beans, Foreign Brew
For all of Yountville’s culinary celebrity, some of the best espresso in town can be found in this bizarre complex. Opening in early 2009, Bardessono is a hotel/spa/restaurant thing that seems to ooze more sculpture and running water fountains per square foot than the rest of Yountville. And that’s saying something. The complex is LEED [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 17 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Beans, Foreign Brew
At its best, Yountville is the New World epicenter for quality food and wine. At its worst, Yountville lays its claim to food & wine prominence through a fabricated culture of European fakery (more on that in a future post). One of the exceptions in town to this latter rule is this this odd curiosity [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 20 May 2009 | Tagged as: Beans, Foreign Brew, Roasting
This St. Helena outlet of a two-location Napa coffeehouse and roaster routinely receives “best coffeehouse” awards in the area. Given how they handle roasted beans, consumer coffee education, and filter coffee, this isn’t much of a surprise — particularly given their general lack of legitimate competition in the region. But from what we can tell, [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 26 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: Foreign Brew
Opening in the Spring of 2008, this remote Ritual location is little more than a counter inside Napa’s relatively new Oxbow Public Market. At first we questioned why the Wine Country needed a Ritual outlet — rather than an expansion of Sonoma-County-based Flying Goat Coffee. But then as we’ve monitored the quality over at The [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 02 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: Beans, Foreign Brew, Local Brew, Quality Issues, Roasting, Starbucks
It’s been a rather sad week for coffee news. An embarrassment, really — with headlines dominated by the ridiculous. There’s Racheal Ray’s TV commercial promoting both Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee and her Death-to-Israel Hamas credentials (though who hasn’t wanted to go jihad on her?). There are vocal members of Christian groups that we now need [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 05 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: Local Brew, Roasting
This famous Napa coffee roaster has locations in downtown Napa and in St. Helena, and it routinely receives “best coffeehouse” awards in Napa town. They not only roast their own coffee in 20-lb batches, but they also offer regular coffee cuppings. And although their location gives them every excuse to abuse misplaced wine tasting analogies [...]
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