News

How Good Could Things Be? A personal story of how Rowster came to be.  20 years ago I discovered the world of specialty coffee.  My friend Paul had just returned from a trip to Puerto Rico. Back then people still used actual photographs. His father-in-law, Israel had just bought the property that would become Sandra Farms, and there was this photograph of him standing in the Puerto Rican rainforest roasting coffee over an open fire.  It really spoke to me. How could I do that?  Soon I was ordering green coffee over the internet and reading every book or blog...

Peru El Milagro Peru, Colombia's neighbor to the South has a fascinating history and culture. A melting pot of Europeean, American, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, African and Asian populations mixed with Andean Coastal people and Incans. The home of Machu Pichu and home to Llamas and the guinea pigs, which are considered a delicacy and often served barbecued in the marketplace. Peru is also known as the birthplace of the potato.  Coffee from Peru often shares many characteristics with its neighbor, Colombia to the North. Colombian coffee has a long history of constant improvement and investment by local, state and...

Our Most Anticipated Release of the Year Way back in 2008 or 2009 we had the idea for a new, specialty version of the classic Moka-Java Blend. Moka, the port city of Yemen was once the wealthiest city in the world. Coffee traded at $200 per pound, (price adjusted to today's dollar). English merchant ships would load the holds of their ships at the furthest destination of "Java," (the generic name for the region including Sumatra, Bali, Indonesia, and Java), with coffee before making their way West to their home ports in England. Making several stops along the way, and...

While supplies last, we are offering our customers the opportunity to experience the most storied coffee in the world--the Gesha Varietal, a $25 value, for FREE.  Seeds from the scraggly, tall, difficult to harvest Ethiopian "wild coffee tree" were brought to Central America in the 50's. One Panama Farm, Hacienda Esmerelda decided to plant a grove and treat it like specialty coffee.  In 2004 an internationally renowned panel of jurors were struck with the flavors of an Ethiopian coffee on the cupping table. It didn't just posses the qualities of a traditional, fruit forward Ethiopian natural (dried with the fruit...

Meet the Farmer La Fragua Estate sits under the long shadow of Media Luna mountain, near Nilo, in Cundinamarca Department. The 75 hectare (one hectare equals about 2.5 acres) farm was founded in 1876 by the ancestors of Juanita Sinisterra, who is part of small but growing trend of women run farms.  Hauling the equipment across these steep mountains without modern roads or vehicles required unimaginable determination.The name "La Fragua" means "The Forge," since much of the equipment and tracks had to be forged on-site to haul the material and build the equipment necessary to run a coffee farm.  In...