For coffee roasters and lovers, the Moka Java Blend is like an old jazz standard that has been covered and interpreted time and time again. This is Benetti’s take on that tradition. This is our recording of “Stardust.”
Moka Java, as we call it today, is widely considered to be the first coffee blend of record. This was mostly because it combined two of the earliest commercially-traded coffees. The first came from an Arabian province, which is now part of the Republic of Yemen. Almost all of the coffee from this region was exported from a port named Al-Mahka by the Dutch. The other half of the blend came from the Dutch colony of Java, which is now part of Indonesia. Once the Dutch established their commercial coffee operation there, they were able to offer Europe another origin and then a brand new blend that combined both extremes of what was then the coffee growing world.
More than three centuries later, with major changes in the coffee and how it is being processed, specialty roasters are still producing interpretations of the blend. For Benetti’s Moka Java Blend, we employed the philosophy of blending coffees with opposite characteristics that compliment each other. Here, we pit the fruity acidity of an Ethiopian coffee with the thick earthiness of the Sumatra. The result is a rich, complex brew with a smooth mouthfeel.
