Editorial · Global expansion
The State of Global Specialty Coffee, May 2026
30 countries on the shelf, seven added in the last week.
Specialty coffee’s producer story is well-told. Specialty coffee’s roasting story is told country-by-country and mostly through cafe coverage. Cherrybook’s catalog crossed from 24 to 30 distinct roaster countries this week: India and Vietnam joined Colombia and Brazil as producer-country roasters at scale; Switzerland and France filled in the longstanding gaps in our European map; Iceland, Poland, and Dubai’s UAE rounded out scenes most US-centric specialty buyers don’t track. Below, the featured live lot from each new scene and the editorial context for why each scene matters right now.
Published 2026-05-06 · By Cherrybook editorial
Why this matters
Specialty roasting clustered tightly in a handful of cities for most of the last twenty years (Portland, Brooklyn, Melbourne, London, Tokyo). Two trends have changed the map. First, producer countries started building their own roasting layers rather than exporting all green coffee abroad: India, Vietnam, and Mexico in particular. Second, sourcing networks matured to the point where small roasters in formerly under-covered countries (Iceland, Poland, the Gulf) can buy current-vintage Cup of Excellence lots at retail volume. Both trends compress the geography of who can run a serious specialty program.
A note on what comes next. Today’s additions arrived in the last 24 hours and went through the scrape and normalize steps but haven’t yet been through the full weekly enrichment pass (independent reputation signals, buyer reviews, full Northscore recompute). The picks below are vetted by hand; live Northscore values for these specific lots will continue to settle as the third-party signals land.
India
India: producer-country roasting at scale
India shifted from purely a producing country to a roasting country in roughly the last seven years. Six Indian specialty roasters joined the catalog this week, all sourcing primarily from domestic estates in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala. Subko (Mumbai) is doing the most globally legible experimental work; their lot list reads like an international competition catalog with Pichia fermentations, agave-barrel aging, and hand-washed micro-lots from named estates. Blue Tokai (Gurugram) is the volume leader at 25 in-stock lots and has built the deepest single-estate documentation in the Indian specialty scene. Corridor Seven, Araku, Third Wave, and Dope Coffee round out the spread between fully experimental and accessible-daily-drinker.
Featured live lot
Mooleh Manay Estate — Excelsa
Subko Coffee Roasters · IN · anaerobic natural
Excelsa, the rarer cousin of Arabica and Robusta, with 84-hour yeast-inoculated natural fermentation. The kind of lot that signals India isn't just exporting beans anymore. Subko's documentation depth (lot, fermentation protocol, varietal, region) is rare even outside India.
Vietnam
Vietnam: beyond Robusta
Vietnam is famous globally for instant-grade Robusta but the central highlands and Đà Lạt region grow Arabica at altitude. 43 Factory (Đà Nẵng) is the surprise here: their Nueva Alianza series carries Pacamara, Sidra, Maragogipe, and Orange Gesha lots at price points that suggest serious green-buying. La Viet (Đà Lạt) is the in-country origin story; their Đà Lạt Serie ranges across washed and honey processing on local lots. Together the two roasters surface 36 specialty lots from a country most coffee buyers don't think of as a specialty origin.
Featured live lot
Nueva Alianza Pacamara #4733
43 Factory Coffee Roaster · PE · washed
A Pacamara micro-lot at competition-tier sourcing, roasted in Vietnam. The Pacamara cultivar is a Salvadoran-origin Pacas-Maragogipe cross, prized in Cup of Excellence circuits for its size and complex acidity. Roasted in Đà Nẵng instead of Brooklyn or Melbourne. That's the actual story.
Switzerland
Switzerland: competition lots from Zürich
Two Zürich roasters added this week. Mame focuses on Panama Geisha territory; their catalog lists Lamastus Elida and Altieri lots at $20+/oz, which is auction-grade work landing through small-batch Swiss sourcing. Stoll Kaffee runs a parallel single-origin program with broader origin coverage (Brazil, Rwanda, Peru, Mexico) at more accessible price points. Switzerland has long imported specialty (Café Royal, Coop) but home-roaster competition specialists at this scale are newer.
Featured live lot
Lamastus Elida Geisha Anaerobic Omni
Mame · PA · anaerobic natural
Lamastus family Elida Estate Geisha at $20.98/oz, anaerobic omni-roast. The Lamastus family's Elida Estate is one of three farms (alongside Hacienda La Esmeralda and Finca Sophia) that defined the Panama Geisha market. Mame is one of a small number of European roasters carrying current-vintage Lamastus lots at retail.
France
France: Belleville Brûlerie's longevity
France has cafe culture in its bones but historically less third-wave roasting at retail. Belleville Brûlerie has been one of the early Paris specialty roasters since 2013 and has outlasted most of its peers. Their catalog includes a Geisha Lavé from Marysabel & Moises (Honduras), Kelloo Chelchele (Ethiopia), and a small Belleville-house assemblage line. Twelve lots, mostly priced for Parisian cafe wholesale plus a small retail program.
Featured live lot
Geisha Lavé Marysabel & Moises
Belleville Brûlerie · HN
Geisha Lavé from the Caballero family in Honduras at $4.07/oz. The Caballeros (Marysabel and Moises) are one of the most-cited Honduran specialty producers, repeat Cup of Excellence finalists. Belleville's washed prep keeps the floral signature legible without leaning on natural-process intensity.
UAE
UAE: Dubai's Red Sea sourcing
Specialty coffee in the Gulf has grown rapidly in the last decade, anchored by Dubai. RAW Coffee Company has the longest tenure of the Gulf specialty operations (founded 2007) and runs an active green-buying program across East Africa and Yemen (the latter a short Red Sea hop from Dubai). Eleven in-stock lots span Yemen, Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, plus a Colombian Geisha. The Yemeni lots are particularly notable because Yemeni specialty is logistically hard to source consistently outside the region.
Featured live lot
Yemeni Haraz Anaerobic
RAW Coffee Company · YE · anaerobic natural
Yemeni Haraz, anaerobic natural process, from one of the most original-arabica regions on Earth. Haraz coffees historically command premium because of trade-route geography (Yemen ports were specialty's first major export hub centuries before East Africa or Latin America). RAW's anaerobic prep is modern; the lot itself is heritage.
Iceland
Iceland: a small program, careful
Iceland's specialty scene runs through Reykjavík Roasters in central Reykjavík. Eight in-stock lots: Finca El Paraiso (Colombian anaerobic, the Diego Bermudez program), Sertão and Da Lagoa from Brazil, Finca Aurora from Nicaragua. Small program, careful sourcing; the menu reads like a thoughtfully-curated cafe rather than a sprawling retail catalog.
Featured live lot
Finca El Paraiso
Reykjavík Roasters · CO · anaerobic natural
Diego Bermudez's Finca El Paraiso 92, anaerobic natural process. Bermudez (Cauca, Colombia) is one of the most-celebrated thermal-shock and anaerobic processors in current specialty; multiple Cup of Excellence finishes on his program. Reykjavík Roasters carrying El Paraiso says the green-buying network reaches Iceland.
Poland
Poland: more mature than you think
Polish specialty is more developed than most international buyers realize. Coffee Plant (Warsaw) has 38 in-stock lots (broader than several catalogued American roasters) at price points hovering $1.50 to $2/oz. The list reads like a working third-wave cafe roaster: Pink Bourbon, Peru Pacas, Kenya Muthuaini, Burundi Nemba, Honduras Sebastian Mejia. The geographic coverage rivals roasters two and three times their size.
Featured live lot
Kolumbia El Caney Pink Bourbon
Coffee Plant · CO · washed
Pink Bourbon from El Caney in Colombia at $1.82/oz. Pink Bourbon is the breakout cultivar of the last three years (Cherrybook covered it in a March editorial); landing at this price point in a Polish retail catalog is exactly the kind of cross-border discovery story we built the platform for.
The cross-border picture
Specialty coffee is a global supply chain pretending to be a local craft. The producer is in Colombia or Ethiopia or Burundi; the roaster might be in Reykjavík or Galway or Đà Lạt; the buyer might be in any of the 30+ countries we now index, browsing across origins they couldn’t name a decade ago. Cherrybook’s catalog is a working answer to where that supply chain currently lives. Use it.
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