No, it’s not cherry-flavoured coffee. Rather it’s a beautiful blend of El Salvador de la Majada, Columbia Medellin Excelso and Ethiopia Harrar Longberry and it bursts with apricots and berries with a hint of chocolate. Red Cherry Coffee Roasters are at home in Noordhoek, Cape Town, and we love their passion!

Here are the first photos, of DOUBLESHOT COFFEE pulling ESPRESSOLAB’s espresso 1983. We LOVE the 1983 with 40% Fazenda Sta Terezinha, 40% Don Mayo, and 20% Kocherie. It pulls beautifully on our Mirage and we are absolutely excited to be serving it as our Guest Coffee from today for as long as it lasts! We are using a triple basket, with 26 grams, extraction time 26-30 seconds. What we find most fascinating about it, is the layers of flavour it brings with it; predominantly sweet, nutty chocolate!

Craig Butcher in his Channel 4 feature, “A whole latte love“, portrays 8 baristi from around the world pouring latte art. Amongst them, is doubleshot coffeebar, pouring what Katie Carguilo of Counter Culture Coffee calls  ”the fake boobs of coffee, because it’s what’s on the inside that counts.”

And we agree entirely, at doubleshot we’d like to think our coffees come with both the looks and the personality…

Inner beauty. The beginnings of our coffee…

…’accessorised’ by the free pour…

…all shapes and sizes (the three-quarter)…

…have a heart of gold!

Photos courtesy of Daron Chatz

With reference to the FM Life article (15 May 2009) regarding the thriving coffee culture in SA, we are delighted to feature in the Financial Mail and indeed happy to be mentioned in the same breath as our fellow baristas at Origin Coffee Roasting, but would like to point out that we are an independent operation and not Origin’s “second shop in Plett”. We are lucky to have Origin as one of our suppliers of top quality roast beans and are most grateful for all that Origin and David Donde have done to grow and develop the coffee culture in SA to the point where businesses such as doubleshot, that are absolutely passionate about consistently delivering a high quality coffee experience, are able to thrive and share our passion for coffee with our customers.

Daron and Daniel arrived early to do a photo shoot for Kulula’s inflight magazine. Daron loved the early morning light over the piazza and in doubleshot which reminds more of a coffeebar in New York; until the sun rises and it becomes totally Plett.

fine attention to detail…

We all had a fantastic morning and plenty of cappuccini, catching the almost chrome-like-shine of the milk-and-latte-art, which disappears almost as fast as it is poured, over and over and over again.

The shoot was inspiring and the energy exuberating from it seemed to attract more and more people to doubleshot.  Thank you Daron and Daniel for a crazy, creative morning!

Photographer Daron Chatz

The New York Times has just exposed one of our favourite chocolate/coffee secrets… the hole-in-the-wall Claudio Corallo shop in Lisbon. We’ve tried and tested their chocolates and find them to be excellent!

For those not in the know, it’s surprisingly easy to walk past some of the world’s best chocolate & coffee in the backstreets of Lisbon…

Specifically, we love the chocolate-coated coffee beans which come from Corallo’s own plantation of Nova Moca on the island of Sao Tome. (The cocoa beans come from their Terreiro Velho plantation on the island of Principe.) Corallo has taken three antique varieties of coffee bean and covered each in the same chocolate (55%cocoa), and depending on the coffee bean, either the coffee is dominant in the initial taste with the chocolate coming through later, or the chocolate predominates with the delicate coffee lingering through in the later stages, or, as in the third sample of coffee bean (there is a distinct order to this tasting!) both the flavour of the coffee and the chocolate burst through onto the palate in a delightful fusion. It is quite extraordinary.

A choco-cafe-overdose on a recent visit – cocoa beans, Corallo’s signature cocoa nibs, 100% cocoa sorbet and a Nova Moca Sao Tome espresso…

Thankfully we managed to organise a bag of Sao Tome beans from the shop in Lisbon just before the NYT got on the loudhailer. They will be making their way to doubleshot shortly and we can’t wait to experiment with their unique taste on our Kees idrocompresso machine!

Subsequent to reading about the performance enhancing effects of caffeine in the New York Times, the Easter Bunny has indicated that he intends to have a doubleshot coffee before delivering eggs to the children of Plettenberg Bay on Sunday morning.

Per the NYT:

“caffeine increases the power output of muscles by releasing calcium that is stored in the muscle. The effect can enable atheletes to keep going longer or to go faster in the same length of time”

The Easter Bunny has found itself under increasing pressure in Plett as the popular South African seaside town has grown in size over the last few years.

Easter art at doubleshot as egg-fever kicks in…

“He is particularly fond of the latte art at doubleshot… and of course, the freshly-made carrot juice!” a spokesperson for the Bunny  said.

*     *     *     *     *

On the subject, EASTER OPENING HOURS AT DOUBLESHOT:

SATURDAY 11TH APRIL: 8am – 1pm

SUNDAY 12TH APRIL:     closed

MONDAY 13TH APRIL:   8am – 1pm

For those who haven’t visited in a while, you may notice the new work of art on the wall.

The artist is Andrea Francois Vercingetorige Cristoforetti, a regular to doubleshot. We love his open-mindedness which provokes thought and redefines traditions, which is also reflected in his architectural design at DODECA, which strives to seek harmony with nature. Here is a bit of detail…

 Who said biology isn’t creative?

One of the best parts of the painting, however, is not on the wall – it’s watching our local cheese maker from Fynboshoek Cheese Farm, Alje. Amongst other things, Alje is also a geneticist, and every Tuesday when he comes in to deliver his cheese, he sips a three-quarter cappuccino and stares at the painting with a huge smile on his face. He loves Andrea’s take on CHROMOSOMES!

Finally, a chance to get some “screen-time” in (as opposed to “bean-time”)! We’ve made a couple of additions to the site – you’ll notice the doubleshot twitter feed in the sidebar for some more frequent news updates from the shop in between godoubleshot posts. If you’re into that sort of thing, you can also ‘follow’ us on twitter here, and watch us as we fumble our way through all this new techie-stuff!

Then, we’ve added a “media” page to thank all of you who’ve written nice things or posted cool photos about doubleshot. If we’ve missed you, we’re sorry (and blame google), please just let us know!

Internet? Twitter? Blogs? YouTube? What was wrong with the simple newspaper?!!

While we’re talking screen-time, a couple of screen-based nuggets from the last couple of months:

1) Fascinating culinary revival in Brooklyn from the NYT
2) These guys do a “coffee porter” beer (check the ‘creations’ page when its back up and running)
2) A docu-DVD must see: Annie Leibovitz, LIFE THROUGH A LENS (check the preview on YouTube)