For a highly regarded roaster, don’t ask James Carter to describe what a coffee tastes like. He’s not interested.
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He just knows what tastes good.
“I know whether it’s good or not, but geez, don’t ask me to put it into words,” he says. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
James is the owner and man behind River Roast Coffee, and Real Coffee Espresso Bar in Lorn. River Roast Coffee is a multi award winning label and it’s fair to say it sits up with any coffee in the country – and Maitland is its home.
Consider this: one of the world’s most prestigious coffee competitions is the annual Sydney Royal Fine Food Show award. James had champion coffee in 2009 and the following year picked up a second gold medal.
That was for his Paterson Blend, a product that continues to march out the door at his Real Coffee Espresso Bar. And the medals are still coming in too. Ask any of the country’s top coffee aficionados and they’ll know of River Roast all right.
“I produce locally roasted, small batch coffee and craft it into the best possible coffee blends I can,” he explains. “You drink my coffee and you’re tasting my passion.
“I don’t mind if someone tastes one of my blends and doesn’t really like it - that’s personal taste. I just want to put a coffee in front of them that is made fresh, that is prepared correctly and that gives the coffee beans every chance to shine.”
James fell into coffee – he was originally in the catering industry – but these days he’s happy to call himself a coffee tragic.
“You see that 500 gram packet there,” he says, pointing to ground coffee on a shelf in his Lorn store. “That’s probably an entire year’s work for a single plant. It’s precious stuff, you don’t want to waste it.”
James’ introduction to coffee roasting came at just the right time – when Australia was starting to take its coffee seriously. Now it has one of the most serious coffee cultures in the world, no doubt.
“It’s a world away from when I started 20 years ago,” James recalled. “Back then if you wanted top coffee you probably had to go to Lygon Street in Melbourne. Nowadays coffee places are popping up everywhere, and Maitland is no different.”
The River Roast coffee beans are an exotic lot … at any moment you’re likely to be tasting coffee from Central America, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Sumatra, Kenya, Peru or Mexico – and that’s just off the top of his head.
“The young kids who work here, I don’t let them near the machine to start with,” James says. “They have to learn. I’d rather they have no training so I can teach them my way. Teach them to love what we’re doing.”
- Hunterhedonists.com.au
