Coffee Around the World: Brewing Traditions From Brazil to Ethiopia to Italy

Coffee might all start as a cherry on a tree, but by the time it reaches your cup it's been shaped by the place it grew up in and the hands that brewed it. Every coffee-drinking country has its own rituals, its own idea of what a "good cup" should be, and once you start noticing them, your morning brew becomes a little bit of travel.

So grab a cup and come with us from the vast farms of Brazil, up into the highlands of Ethiopia, and over to the espresso bars of Italy. Three countries, three completely different relationships with the same humble bean.

Brazil: the backbone of the coffee world

Brazil has been the world's largest coffee producer for well over a century, and its influence is hard to overstate. This is coffee grown at a scale that's difficult to picture: rolling estates and hillsides dotted with farms both tiny and vast, much of it dried with the fruit still on the bean to build sweetness and body.

That approach shapes the flavour. Brazilian coffees tend to be lower in acidity and generous in body, leaning into comforting notes of chocolate, toasted nuts and gentle sweetness. They're the coffees that play beautifully with milk, hold their own as an espresso, and rarely frighten anyone off. If specialty coffee sometimes feels intimidatingly bright and fruity, Brazil is the reassuring hand on your shoulder.

Our Brazil Pocos De Caldas is exactly that kind of cup. Grown in Minas Gerais and naturally processed, it's all milk chocolate, hazelnut and vanilla, smooth-bodied and endlessly easy to drink. Brilliant as a reliable everyday coffee, and lovely with a splash of milk. If you're just getting into single origins, this is a perfect place to start.

Ethiopia: the birthplace of it all

If Brazil is scale, Ethiopia is soul. This is where coffee began, and it's still woven into daily life in a way that's genuinely moving. The Ethiopian coffee ceremony, roasting green beans over coals, grinding them by hand, brewing in a clay pot called a jebena and serving in three rounds, can take hours. It's about hospitality and togetherness far more than caffeine.

The coffee itself is just as distinctive. Ethiopian beans, often heirloom varieties found nowhere else, are famous for delicate florals, bright citrus and a tea-like elegance that sits right at the opposite end of the spectrum from a cosy Brazilian cup.

Our Ethiopia Aricha shows exactly why people fall for East African coffee. A natural anaerobic heirloom from the Yirgacheffe region, grown at a staggering 2,150 metres and fermented for nine days before drying, it bursts with hibiscus, rose, lemon zest and strawberry, all resting on a soft chocolate base. Brew it as a filter, take your time, and let it open up. It's a limited run in 250g bags, so it's worth grabbing while it's here.

Tasting the Pocos and the Aricha side by side is one of the best ways to understand just how wide coffee's range really is: same fruit, wildly different cup.

Italy: not where it's grown, but where it's served

Here's the twist: Italy doesn't grow a single coffee bean. Its climate is all wrong for it. And yet no country has shaped how the world drinks coffee more.

Italy gave us espresso, and with it the cappuccino, the macchiato, the little cup knocked back standing at the bar. Italian coffee culture is about ritual and rhythm: an espresso is a punctuation mark in the day, ordered quickly, drunk quickly, rarely lingered over. (And yes, a cappuccino after 11am will raise eyebrows.) Traditionally the roasts ran dark and blends leaned on robusta for a thick, bittersweet crema.

If you love that classic Italian espresso taste, we'd point you straight to Throwback. It's our nod to espresso's past, a traditional-style blend built for rich, chocolatey body and a fruity finish, but achieved without heavy dark roasting or any robusta. Expect dark chocolate, citrus fruits and hazelnut, gorgeous in milk-based drinks and more than happy black. It keeps the ritual and the comfort of a proper Italian espresso, while letting real quality beans shine through.

Pull a shot, froth a little milk, drink it standing up if you're feeling authentic.

One bean, a whole world

That's the joy of it. The same fruit, grown a few degrees either side of the equator and brewed by people with wildly different ideas about what coffee should be, can taste of chocolate in Brazil, hibiscus and rose in Ethiopia, and pure bittersweet ritual in Italy.

The best way to travel is simply to taste. Brew a comforting Brazilian one morning, a bright Ethiopian the next, and pull an espresso at the weekend. Notice what changes. Notice what you reach for again.

Explore our full range of single-origin coffees, each roasted to highlight its unique flavour and origin story, over on our Single Origin collection, and let your kettle do the travelling.