Last week, Goop—Gwyneth Paltrow’s international lifestyle brand—released its first-ever coffee. Lest you think Paltrow herself is donning the earplugs and monitoring roast curves, Goop’s “Fair Trade Specialty Coffee” was roasted by Aussie-turned-Californians Common Room Roasters in Newport Beach, and sourced from noted Colombian producer Astrid Medina. The bag comes dressed up in muted cream and pink tones and retails for $28 which is frankly what high-quality coffee should be selling for across the board.
The hero in this story is Astrid Medina, whom Paltrow tells Vogue is a “brilliant female founder [she’s] so proud to support.” Owner of Finca Buenavista in the Planadas municipality of Tolima, Colombia, Medina is a third-generation coffee producer, following in the footsteps of her father and paternal grandfather. Along with her husband Raúl Antonio Durán and her sister, Medina took over the ownership of Finca Buenavista after the passing of her father, where she grows Caturra, Castillo, and Colombia varieties on the 15-hectare farm sitting high up at 1,800MASL.
Medina’s profile in the coffee world-first rose back in 2015 when she won first place at the Colombia Cup of Excellence after having only begun producing specialty coffee a year earlier. Her fully wash processed coffee took top marks with a score of 90.2, fetching an auction price of $14.50 per pound. After the win, Medina, an underrepresented female in the vastly male-dominated world of coffee production—while nearly 70% of farmworkers are female, only around 20-30% are farm owners—told Communicafe, “We women are boundless and beautiful. Although being a coffee grower is challenging, it’s a wonderful dream. I only grow my coffee based on good practices.”
Since then, Medina’s coffee has been purchased and offered around the world by a number of importers, including Olam and Collaborative Coffee Source, and found at roasters worldwide like Tandem and Hex in the States, Amor Perfecto in Colombia, Clifton and Passion Fruit in the UK, Koppi in Sweden, and Jacu in Norway.
The Goop collab is being marketed as “Fair Trade Specialty Coffee,” and so we aren’t sure if this offering is from a specific Medina day lot or plot of land on Finca Buenavista. We do know, per the Goop website, that it is a “fragrant medium-roast Arabica coffee” with “floral, peach, and honey notes.” It’s unknown if Paltrow is pairing said coffee with her weekly single American Spirit light, but that does sound nice.
For more information on Finca Buenavista, visit their Facebook page, and follow Astrid Medina on Instagram to get updates on her farm and see who is roasting her coffee.
