Another season, another reason for making coffee

How hard can it be to make a real­ly good cup of cof­fee? The cor­rect answer, as any Welling­ton­ian knows, is “Real­ly bloody hard!” A good barista is a thing to be cher­ished, and the best of the best come togeth­er every year for the Huh­ta­ma­ki New Zealand Barista Cham­pi­onship to show off their skills and find one win­ner to stand tall for Kiwi cof­fee cul­ture at the World Barista Cham­pi­onship in Vien­na.

Thanks to the cham­pi­onship organ­is­ers, we got to spend some time hang­ing out with one of this year’s com­peti­tors, Richard Legg from Cof­fee Supreme.

Back in 2009, Richard was spend­ing his gap year mak­ing cof­fee in his home town of Feild­ing when the Supreme account rep for the cafe where he worked encour­aged him to enter the cham­pi­onship. He came first in the Welling­ton region heat and sixth over­all. Now, after a cou­ple of years at uni­ver­si­ty, real­is­ing halfway through his degree that he was going to go back to mak­ing cof­fee as soon as he grad­u­at­ed and so there was real­ly no rea­son not to cut to the chase, he’s sad­dling up for anoth­er go. The Wellingtonista’s video­g­ra­ph­er-in-res­i­dence, Tom A., and I lis­tened intent­ly as he told us how it’s done:

You can find Richard at Cof­fee Supreme on Hop­per Street Monday–Friday until 12.30, and the Huh­ta­ma­ki New Zealand Barista Cham­pi­onship is being held at the Michael Fowler Cen­tre from 23–25 March: heats on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, with finals and semi-finals on Sun­day. Spec­ta­tors are wel­come and entry is free.