The three pillars of high-quality coffee
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Organic, Shade-Grown, and Hand-Roasted
When MotherNature.com began looking into sources of coffee, we quickly realized that our coffee had to be more than just great-tasting. It also had to reflect our concerns for quality, purity, and environmental consciousness. That's a tall order to fill, but we believe it's worth the effort. And we think you'll agree, once you've had your first cup of Mothernature.com Dark Roast, House Blend, Hazelnut, or Breakfast Blend.
It turns out that the key to a full-bodied, aroma-bursting cup of coffee goes beyond its source country and type of bean, and rests on three essential pillars: organic, shade-grown, and hand-roasting.
Organic. All of our coffee is organically grown, without the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, on farms that go through a rigorous three-year certification process. This can be time-consuming, and the big coffee cartels frankly can't be bothered. But we feel that in the long run everybody benefits when coffee is produced organically. The growers receive a premium price that helps ensure a viable living, and they have increased incentive to preserve their local environment for future generations. Coffee pickers and native plants and animals are not exposed to toxic chemicals, and neither are you, the coffee consumer.
Shade-grown. All of our coffee is shade-grown. That is, a canopy of various native trees naturally covers the coffee plants. This adds greatly to the local biodiversity. For example, it allows for a range of birds, especially migratory songbirds, to coexist with coffee cultivation. The birds as well as a greater diversity of plants reduce pest invasion and the need for pesticides. A canopy of shade trees also helps keep the coffee trees moist, prevents topsoil erosion, and keeps topsoil nutrients from being bleached out by the sun.
It used to be that almost all coffee was shade-grown. In recent years, however, huge multinational coffee companies began to take over from small, independent growers. These companies would often come in and clear-cut the rainforest so that they could plant higher-yielding, sun-resistant strains. The best way to maximize the harvest from these coffee plants was to keep them tightly spaced together and spray them with pesticides. MotherNature.com's coffee connection told us, "We have a coffee old-timer who stops by now and then to just hang out. He says that when Costa Rica switched the bulk of its production to non-shade, their quality went to pot. Now, he makes an extra effort to find shade stuff. And it's not about saving birds or avoiding pesticides and soil depletion. He just wants a great cup of coffee!"
Hand-roasted. Our premium, world-class beans are hand-roasted to perfection. This careful process has been developed over many years to consistently deliver you a richer, fuller taste profile that is perfectly suited to organic coffee.
These three pillars of high-quality coffee allow MotherNature.com to present you with the best of both worlds: a natural coffee with a consistently deep and satisfying taste.