Library
Stories on coffee, culture, and people behind it. Published by Standart.
Rachel Apple is a Cup of Excellence Head Judge, photographer, and co-founder of Raise the Bar, a community and education platform for specialty coffee professionals. She loves bin diving for vinyl,...
As the sun set in Zimbabwe’s lush Honde Valley, I watched kids push car tyres up and down the street, racing each other through the village. In Africa, most often, less is more. People are used to ...
Los Angeles resists clean outlines, and its coffee culture lives somewhere between softness and grit. Built from migration, precarious work, and long-standing food traditions, it moves at uneven te...
Tinashe Nyamudoka, founder of Kumusha Wines and Kumusha Coffee, is more than a world-class sommelier; he is a symbol of how wine, culture, and competition can challenge global narratives about tast...
When exploring foreign lands, few feelings compare to the triumph of discovering something known only to locals. Realizing these euphoric moments requires a healthy pinch of boldness, however; one ...
Some coffee origins are still in the process of becoming. Malawi is one of them—a place where potential feels tangible even if not fully realized. Farmers are steadily shaping a future for their co...
Blue-sky ski days to negroni nights, Hakuba is a 24-hour town hidden in the Japanese highlands. From the staunch octogenarian locals fiercely guarding their old traditions, to the young crowd of mu...
In recent years, matcha has become one of the most popular drinks ordered and enjoyed in cafes around the world. But with its growing popularity, several issues have also emerged, ranging from a la...
As coffee grew cheaper in 18th-century Europe, it spread beyond the elite, alarming German rulers. In Prussia, Frederick the Great saw it as a threat to order, economy, and authority. His efforts t...
Valtteri Bottas is a known quantity at Standart, being as he is a past interviewee and co-owner of Finnish roastery Kahiwa. He moves quickly, and not only when he’s piloting an earthbound rocket ar...
There’s a guy in Melbourne who can make you a latte in 15 seconds. And you get your choice of five different origins—where the pre-batched espresso is dispensed from a volumetric tap.
One careless sip. That’s all it took. A whole day ruined by a burnt tongue. A whole day wasted. What’s worse, you’re on holiday, with a slew of gustatory pleasures planned out before you.
How do you regrow a stagnant coffee economy? Zambia isn’t a coffee origin on many peoples’ radars, which is no surprise given that its coffee production has dwindled to almost nothing in recent yea...
A cup of coffee and a good book can spell comfort or contravention. In libraries, liquids have long been treated with suspicion, liable to spill and stain. But the pairing wasn’t always forbidden.
London, as it was then and as it is now, time’s relentless march having altered some things for the better, some for the worse, and others, not at all. We can be glad at any rate that one of time’s...
Romain Wyndaele is a former professional middle-distance runner who once claimed a French national title over 1,500 metres. He now balances dual careers as an international model and a head barista...
There’s nothing that draws the ire of coffee enthusiasts quite like the onslaught of Pumpkin Spice everything once the colder months set in.
There are cafes, and there are cafes. We go to the former for our baser needs—a quick caffeine fix, an unavoidable meeting that should have been an email. The latter, however, we go to because we a...
Aside from bridging the gap between artist and designer with installations in some of the world’s most auspicious locations, Spanish artist Jaime Hayon is a coffee fiend. Aware of this penchant of ...
Might the soul of architecture reside not in spaces of permanence, but in the gaps through which we pass to get there? Peer through an architect’s eyes as she uses the cafe to reflect on the potenc...
Many flights leave at yawning time, and due to time constraints or lack of will, preparing a V60 is less than feasible. So, our only recourse is mass-produced, uncared for coffee at the airport, wh...
For the discerning coffee drinker, entering a cafe for the first time can evoke a mix of anticipation and unease. Will this be to my taste?
Slowly sinking under the weight of more beauty than can be consumed locally, Venice is less a museum than a gorgeous, waterlogged maze that refuses to let you leave.
Egypt’s coffee culture is layered and full of contradiction—loud and hushed, traditional and modern, bitter and sweet; beyond even the trendiest specialty cafes lies a deep lineage of ritual.
