Borogove Coffee is a new enterprise that takes premium coffee production to the highest level.  The company produces a broad selection of custom-roasted single-origin and blended coffees, specially chosen for their quality and flavor. These coffees are selected, roasted and blended by Tim McCormack and Dismas Smith, who are well known among Pacific Northwest coffee cognoscenti. 

A native of Washington State, Tim McCormack has more than twenty-five years of experience in the specialty coffee industry.  He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology from Washington State University in 1978 and spent ten seasons working on archaeological excavations in The United States, Spain and Israel. In February of 1979, he moved to Seattle and joined Starbucks Coffee and Tea, where he worked in their roasting plant.  His duties and responsibilities there increased with his tenure at Starbucks, eventually expanding to include coffee roasting and roaster supervision, inventory control, coffee blend formulation, quality control, research and writing of advertising and training materials, training of production, wholesale and retail personnel, and purchasing of teas, herbs, spices and flavorings. Tim trained the original Starbucks coffee baristas and helped establish the standards for drip coffee and espresso drink preparation and service. 

When Starbucks Coffee and Tea was sold in 1987, he accepted a position as Vice President with Caravali Coffees, the wholesale division of Starbucks, which changed hands just prior to the sale of Starbucks itself.  In this capacity, he supervised the construction of Caravali’s roasting plant, purchased the raw coffee, teas and other products, and supervised quality control, product development, roasting, and other facets of production. 

During his tenure at Caravali, the company won several awards, cupping competitions and loyal customers across America and beyond.  Tim developed relationships with specialty coffee brokers in the U.S. and Europe, and visited numerous coffee farms, mills and exporters in Central and South America.  In 1992, he was invited to address Sintercafé, the annual conference of Latin American coffee producers.  He has also written a number of articles in trade journals and coffee publications, and given countless lectures and cupping demonstrations at home and abroad.

In 1997 Tim launched Zoka, a coffeehouse that featured on-site roasting in the Greenlake neighborhood of Seattle. The quality of the espresso drinks and coffee blends soon attracted the attention of serious coffee drinkers across the city.  Tim’s continuing devotion to coffee and tea is tireless, and the acuity of his palate is second to none.

Dismas Smith joined Zoka coffeehouse in 1999, where he honed his barista skills and learned to roast under Tim’s guidance.  Dismas entered the United States Barista Championship in 2002 and took first place, winning the title of North American Barista Champion.  Since then he has been traveling the globe, training baristi, judging barista competitions, meeting and sharing information and brewing techniques with his colleagues and peers in the gourmet coffee world.  In 2004, Dismas co-founded the Barista Guild of America to provide baristi across the country and beyond an avenue for collaboration and professional development. Dismas has an avid interest in espresso and espresso drinks, and is constantly experimenting with new blends, brewing methods and recipe ideas.

Last year Dismas had the distinct honor of serving the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, as a cupping judge in their annual Coffee Quality Competition. While there, Dismas also visited several coffee farms and enjoyed seeing first hand the differences between farming and processing methods and the resulting products.

Tim and Dismas are dedicated to moving beyond the archaic concepts of coffee as a generic stimulant or a flavoring for steamed milk.  They are on a quest to find singularly unique and distinguished coffees that vividly express the conditions in which they were cultivated: the soil, the climate and the local flora and fauna, as well as the expertise of the grower and the techniques of the miller. 

“We are used to hearing the usual clichés about coffee flavor; Guatemalan coffee tastes like this and Colombian coffee tastes like that,” McCormack says, “but even in a relatively small country like Guatemala, there are more than a half dozen completely separate and distinct growing areas. These geographically isolated regions have different climates, soil and terrain, that produce coffees of distinctive flavor and character.  No one would say that ‘French wine tastes fruity and Italian wine tastes woody,’ but those are the kinds of generalizations that we constantly hear in the coffee realm.  It is difficult at times to describe the incredibly subtle complexity of certain coffees, but we think that moving the descriptions beyond bland oversimplification is a good place to start.”

Finding an exotic coffee from a single source is far from the end of the endeavor.  Coffee is extremely sensitive to its environment and its flavor reflects the conditions in which it was grown and the way it was handled after picking.  Each botanical variety has unique flavor characteristics, and expresses a terroir, or as the French say –a flavor of the place.  The standards and techniques for picking, processing, sorting and grading coffee also profoundly influence the quality of the finished product.

“At Borogove, we are looking for exceptional small lots, limited offerings of exquisite, hand-crafted, estate-grown coffees that provide an exemplary expression of the pure essence of the origin” McCormack insists.  “Such coffees can be artfully roasted to bring out their optimum complexity and sweetness, and then matched with cuisine to create a harmonious synergy of flavors. These coffees all have a story to tell.” He goes on to assert that “they are a manifestation of the indigenous soil, water, and climate where they grow, and they are also the product of a people, a culture and a way of life.  Like great wines, truly great coffees change you when you drink them.  It’s that experience that I want to share.  It’s something that enriches life and makes your spirits soar.”