House Espresso Blend Coffee

This espresso blend has proved remarkably popular amongst our cafe customers. We have been offering our House Espresso blend for over 30 years and one could describe this as the window in time when serious Italian coffee drinking hit our streets.

Until that time the UK market-place was mainly filter coffee unless you went to a specialised Italian cafe. Our Mountain Deluxe Coffee blend is a particularly good example of the sorts of coffees that we were drinking from the mid-1970s onwards. Starting in many big cities the espresso revolution piqued the UK’s love of milky coffee and kept what had been our favourite way of drinking coffee since the war fashionable and fresh.

At the time of its development Northern Tea Merchants was extremely proud of the fact that we used and sold very little Robusta coffee. Robusta is not coffea Arabica, rather coffea canephora and is cheaper, more bitter tasting and used to reduce the price of Arabica coffee blends. One of Northern Tea Merchants claims at that time which worked to great effect was that we used little or no Robusta coffee in our blends. So our first espresso blend does not contain any Robusta.

Many of our espresso blends today contain approximately 30% Indian Cherry Robusta. Our views have changed, and this has nothing to do with making extra profit. Robusta can be an integral part of the blend that adds crema and thickness / umami to the final beverage. However, based on our outlook and claims at the time we used in place of Robusta, our Indian Mysore Plantation A Coffee which has a similar effect on the final product.

Todays espresso market is very different than that of the mid to late 1980s and Northern Tea Merchants blending techniques has changed to reflect the times. We are always experimenting with new coffees and producing new blends for commercial customers and a tasting session today would be very different to that of 30 years ago. It is rare that companies give away their blends but in this case we are happy to share the recipe. 40% Colombian Continental Roast, 30% Sumatra Lintong Coffee and 30% Indian Mysore Plantation A. Perhaps those of you have tried many of our coffees will see why this coffee has such strength and pungency!