Good morning and happy Monday to all,

Nice fall morning here, we’re on our 2nd cup trying to get ready for a busy week, we have some friends visiting this week. Soon John C and Joe C will be traveling to Colombia to do a bit of work in the interior before they are joined by the other John at ASOEXPORT – where we’ll see many of our exporting friends.

After making new contract lows near .9200 in Dec the market based there and found support, where we rallied back towards .9500 on a strong rally Friday. According to the commitment of traders report, the selling was once again spec based and they now hold a large 68048 lot net short position. There wasn’t much in the way of news during the week, but we suppose that could be part of the problem. Crops are moving on schedule, and we maybe one or two exceptions, look to be meeting expectations, meaning that once again, supply will be more than adequate. Market needs a good close above old support now resistance at .9800 to give us some reason to rally and make some of the new shorts rethink their positions. Bigger number is over 1.04 but that seems really far away right now.

For we in the specialty world, this has presented many challenges. The costs to produce excellent coffee don’t come down with a C market that’s looking at the commercial world and it’s needs. From Indonesia to Ethiopia and our friends in Central and South America, they’ve said enough is enough and refuse to follow the terminal markets lower, meaning differentials – for those of us who follow them – continue to get higher and higher as the market goes lower and lower. Producers and exporters just looking to get some kind of fair return on the effort and investments it takes to produce quality coffees.

Bargain alert: kindly note we have a few bags of Costa Rica Tarrazu and Guatemala Antigua from the previous crop to the current one. And, a partial lot of Yirgacheffe Gr 2 as well. We think they cup pretty well. We’re discounting them about 20 cents to our offers of the current crop hoping to entice your interest.

About to arrive we have FTO Peru HB EP we really liked the PSS. They’ll join our FTO Mexico Chiapas, Sumatra Mandheling, Honduras Marcala, Nicaragua SHG and Colombia Excelso EP, all FTO’s available in Continental, all cup very nicely. Also, in Continental we have conventional lots of Sumatra Mandheling, along with some RFA Certified as well, we have some nice RFA Brazil 2/3 FC as well as some 3/4 GC. We have a few Excelso EP and Supremos left, a little more than one lot left of this year’s Tarrazu, some Antigua Pastoral, some really nice Kenya AB – with just a few bags (8) of AA left from our first shipment this year. We have a very nice Panama SHB Boquete “Indian Baru” as well.

We’d love to send you a sample of any of these really fine coffees or share some cupping notes if you prefer.

How can we help you today?