Our Collaboration with Calico Coffee
About Calico Coffee
Calico Coffee has become a beloved London coffee brand since their inception earlier this year. The beautifully designed shop near Waterloo perfectly leverages Junchao's architectural prowess, in tandem with some of his coffee expertise.
Their expansive coffee menu features many guest roasters, plus some coffees that they roast in-house.
One thing that immediately stands out when visiting Calico is the sheer attention to detail. Everything from workflow design to water setup and aesthetic presentation feels intentional and deeply considered.
How Our Collaboration Began
When Junchao reached out to me earlier this year to ask if we would be down to collaborate on some incredibly exciting releases together, I jumped at the opportunity.
Recently, he visited us at the roastery to roast alongside us on the Loring S15 and IRM 7, to produce four unique coffees from his own green coffee selection.
Collaborative roasting projects like this are always fascinating because they bring together slightly different philosophies around development, flavour expression and roast style. Even very small differences in approach can dramatically shift the final presentation of a coffee.
The Collaborative Releases
1. 8 North, 82 West — Panama Gesha Blend
A collaboration of three Panamanian coffee farms, curated exclusively for Calico Coffee by Jose (Poncho) Gallardo.
Hailing from the Chiriqui region, this incredible coffee, sourced from Finca Feryen, Finca Talamancas and Finca Jurutungo, combines the best qualities of Washed, Natural and Honey processing to give a layered, complex experience.
We feel privileged that Calico have trusted us to roast this coffee for them, as it is truly remarkable.
In true Calico fashion, they've opted to put 8N82W in their primary hopper, using this stunning Gesha as their house coffee.
The resulting cup profile manages to balance florality, sweetness and tactile depth in a way that feels both expressive and approachable — something that can actually be quite difficult to achieve with high-end Gesha lots.
2. Yunlan Estate Gesha — Yunnan, China
Yes, you heard it here first. Chinese Gesha — sourced through our friends at Yundian.
In 2017, the Yunlan Estate imported a selection of Gesha seeds from the Peterson Family Farm, Hacienda La Esmeralda (Panama), and planted them on their farm at an altitude of 1750 MASL.
Gesha saplings (particularly those with Panamanian lineage) tend to be a high-investment, low-yield cultivar, requiring constant maintenance and meticulous attention to detail — some farmers even return to their crop multiple times a day to move the leaves into particular positions to give the cherries the maximum amount of shade to extend maturation.
The Gesha saplings also have a much longer-than-average maturation period, taking about four years before the crop is bearing a reasonable yield.
Mr. Zhang (proprietor of Yunlan) took several years of relentless experimentation until finally in 2023, the first batch of Gesha was ready for market.
This year's harvest (2025), only 1000kg of this coffee have been cultivated, yielding exceptionally high-quality coffee with pronounced flavour characteristics akin to red wine, dragonfruit and black tea.
Chinese specialty coffee is evolving incredibly quickly right now, and coffees like this demonstrate just how serious producers in Yunnan have become about quality-focused cultivation and processing.
3. Honeymoon — Sidama, Ethiopia
A stunning washed Ethiopian coffee, cultivated in the Sidama region — our favourite producing region in all of Ethiopia.
In recent years, Sidama has been home to many Cup of Excellence winners, as well as the increased lifting of trade restrictions which had affected Ethiopia for many years.
This lifting of restrictions has been paramount in enabling direct trade with individual coffee farmers and small collectives.
The resulting cup profile on Honeymoon is exceptionally clean and articulate, presenting many of the classic washed Ethiopian characteristics that made Sidama famous in the first place.
4. Hambela — Guji, Ethiopia
As much as I love Sidama, nowhere does Natural processing better than Guji.
Hambela is one of Guji's most sought-after washing stations, buying cherries from many of the smallholder farms in the Oromia producing region.
Produced using exclusively JARC cultivar, this lot of 74110 and 74112 provides many of the classic Guji terroir characteristics, like blueberry, apricot and black tea.
For anyone interested in how terroir and processing can dramatically influence flavour expression, our guide to Pink Bourbon coffee explores many similar ideas in greater depth.
Natural Ethiopian coffees like this continue to be some of the most expressive coffees in specialty coffee when roasted and processed well.
About the Author
Ben is the Head of Coffee at Harmony Coffee, a competition barista and trainer with over a decade in specialty coffee. He’s trained hundreds of baristas, competed in UK coffee championships, and spends an unreasonable amount of time making pourover recipes.
