On November 28th and 29th in Sydney, Australia, we’re inviting you to take part in one of the world’s most delicious consumer festivals: Rootstock Sydney, a collaborative not-for-profit event that celebrates the sustainable food and wine, as well as highlighting the very best in progressive Australian coffee. The event takes place at Carriageworks, a contemporary arts center and collaborative partner of Rootstock Sydney.
Now in its third year, Rootstock Sydney 2015 will feature a remarkable assembly of wine makers from around the world, focusing on wines that are grown organically or Biodynamically, and vinified without heavy manipulation and minimal sulfur content. If you’re unfamiliar with what this means, trust us: Rootstock Sydney will be featuring delicious, memorable, and utterly unique wines, while celebrating the iconoclastic winemakers behind them. The event’s food component is equally engaging, bringing in everything from salt and oysters to cheese and beef, all of it mindfully produced and tastily presented.
This year specialty coffee has been afforded space at the cornucopian Rootstock Sydney table. For the first time ever the event will present a remarkable coffee pavilion, featuring open service from some of Australia’s very best roasters and cafe brands. The coffee pavilion roster includes coffee and service from Artificer, Everyday Coffee, Marvell Street Roasters, Mecca, Monastery Coffee, Market Lane Coffee, Proud Mary Coffee, Reuben Hills, Sample Coffee, Seven Seeds, Single Guys, and a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony presented by Djebena Coffees.
But that’s not all! On Saturday and Sunday morning, Sprudge is teaming up with Rootstock Sydney to present a series of coffee talks, bringing together some of the best and brightest minds in the Australian coffee industry. On Saturday, November 28th at 9:30 AM join us in the Cinema venue for a talk titled “The Evolution of Restaurant Coffee“, presented by Tim Varney (World AeroPress Championship, ex-Tim Wendelboe) and Mads Kleppe (Sommelier at NOMA). Then on Sunday the 29th, we’ll be back in the Cinema venue at 10am for a Specialty Coffee 101 roundtable talk hosted by Sprudge staff writer Eileen P. Kenny and featuring Fleur Studd (Market Lane), Dan Yee (Artificer Coffee), Mark Dundon (Paramount Coffee Project, Seven Seeds, heaps more) and Mike Eggert, along with perhaps a surprise guest or two.
Both of these talks should be rousing indeed, and we’re enormously exited to be collaborating with Rootstock to bring them your way. We’ll be reporting on site throughout the weekend, so expect much more coverage of the event (and all that beautiful wine) right here on Sprudge.
We’re big fans of reveling in the good feelings and kindred overlap between specialty coffee and natural wine, but to learn more about why Rootstock Sydney is going big on coffee service this year, we asked Mike Bennie, one of Rootstock Sydney’s founders and a noted Australian wine and drinks journalist. Bennie is a co-organizer of this year’s event, along with Giorgio De Maria and James Hird.
“Coffee and wine have a very neat parallel,” Bennie tells Sprudge. “For both drinks, you’ve got to care about where it comes from, how it’s handled, and what kind of intervention brings it to the final cup. So it made sense to feature coffee on Rootstock—this is an event that brings together a bunch of people who give a massive shit about source, process, production, and how to treat the final product, be it wine, food, or coffee. That’s the parallel for us. It all just kind of fits really nicely.”
Tickets for our coffee talks, as well as for the event’s myriad other tasting events and lectures, are available here. We’re proud to be supporting Rootstock Sydney 2015, and hope to see you there.
