When you drive into the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters complex in Waterbury you can smell the coffee from the road. Lovely, if you’re a coffee connoisseur.
Inside the complex there are definitely some connoisseurs. The coffee department is where they test new roasts and maintain quality control.
VPR’s Jane Lindholm visited the coffee department recently while they were conducting what’s called a "calibration cupping." They brought three coffee producers from Colombia and Peru to Vermont and together they conducted blind taste tests of four different South American coffees. They then rated them on specially-prepared forms in English and Spanish. The idea is to get buyers and producers on the same page to understand what the company is looking for in its beans.