Will Southern California be the ‘Napa Valley of Coffee’ ?
It’s a Sunday afternoon at the San Francisco Coffee Festival at Fort Mason, and Jay Ruskey, founder of Frinj Coffee, is standing at his booth in front of a row of lush green plants wrapped in burlap. He picks up a Chemex and pours some of the aromatic, freshly brewed coffee into small cups. Ruskey and Frinj’s head roaster, Richard Masino, look up to see a long line of customers snaking out past several other booths.
They’re all waiting to taste coffee from beans produced in California — yes, California — not Ethiopa or Colombia or Peru but Frinj’s coffee grown in Goleta, north of Santa Barbara. The coffee in the Chemex is from Ruskey’s own trees, planted at his farm Good Land Organics, also Frinj headquarters.