My latest on Sprudge, all about one of my favorite Parisian roasters Cafe Lomi and their Burgundy and Bordeaux blends.

If you know anything about Paris, you know that it’s not acclaimed for its coffee culture, and what makes Café Lomi special isn’t just the fact that it serves good coffee, it’s the fact that it’s on a mission to educate people about coffee.

“Today the trend is acidic coffee,” says Cafe Lomi founder Aleaume Paturle, “but the French don’t like that.” With a history of importing from its colonies, and largely serving robusta beans, paired with the tendency towards supermarket coffee purchasing, Paturle points out that the French coffee palate is for a darker stronger brew. While cafes in Australia, England, the United States and especially Scandinavia might be serving lighter, fruitier roasts, that doesn’t always work with the French crowd. “For me, it shows a lack of personality to not adapt to the French,” says Paturle. “It’s up to us to adapt to the customer.”

That means that Café Lomi roasts on both angles of the coffee spectrum. You can get lighter more acidic tastes as well as the more well-rounded, full-bodied brews. But for a culture that for so long hasn’t embraced the nuances of coffee, there’s a learning curve in understanding beans, which is why Paturle has launched two particular blends that are seemingly very French: Lomi Blend Bourgogne and Lomi Blend Bordeaux.

Yes, that’s a wine reference, because if there’s anything the French know, it’s certainly wine.

Read the full article here.