Oslo Spring Cupping: How We Choose Your Next Coffee

Every year, specialty roasters from across Europe travel to Oslo for one reason: to taste the new harvest. This March, we joined our sourcing partners at Nordic Approach for three days of intensive cupping — and came home with four coffees we can’t wait to roast for you.

What is Spring Cupping?

If you’ve ever wondered how a small roastery in Athens decides which coffees to buy from farms thousands of kilometers away, this is the answer.

Nordic Approach is one of Europe’s leading green coffee importers, based in the Tøyen district of Oslo. Twice a year — spring and autumn — they invite roasters to their headquarters for a cupping marathon: two full days of tasting the latest arrivals from producing countries around the world. The purpose is simple but high-stakes: taste, evaluate, and commit to the coffees that will define your offering for the coming season.

We’ve been working with Nordic Approach for [X years / since year], and Spring Cupping is a trip we plan almost every year. It’s one of the most important dates in our calendar — where we find the coffees you’ll see on our shelves and in your subscriptions over the months ahead.

Three days in Oslo

We arrived in Oslo on Wednesday, March 15th. Cupping ran across two full days — Thursday and Friday — from 9 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon.

The format is intense. Each session is organized by origin: long tables lined with 20 to 30 samples from a single country, each one brewed according to the SCA cupping protocol — the same standardized method used worldwide to evaluate coffee objectively. You move down the table, slurping, scoring, taking notes, going back to the cups that surprised you, comparing lots side by side.

Over the two days, we worked through tables from Honduras, El Salvador, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia. That’s well over a hundred individual coffees — each one a different farm, a different lot, a different story.

On the final evening, the event closes with something special: a community cupping where every roaster who attended brings samples of their own work. Roasters from Norway, Sweden, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Greece — including us — all sharing coffee around the same table. It’s part professional exchange, part celebration of the craft, and it’s one of the things that makes this community feel genuinely connected across borders.

How the selection works

Spring Cupping isn’t a trade show. There are no booths, no pitches, no marketing decks. It’s purely about what’s in the cup.

When you taste a coffee that stands out — one that has the complexity, the clarity, and the character you’re looking for — you can commit to purchasing that specific lot on the spot. Nordic Approach handles the logistics from farm to port to warehouse, but the choice of which coffees make it into our roastery is ours alone.

This year, from over a hundred samples, we narrowed it down to four lots that we believe represent exactly what Handpickers stands for: clean, expressive coffees with distinct origin character. These are the coffees that will arrive at our roastery in the coming weeks and months, ready to be roasted and shipped to you.

Οι καφέδες που επιλέξαμε

Kenya — AA Githiga #096

Region: Kiambu
Variety:  SL28, SL34, Ruiru 11, Batian
Process:  Washed  Altitude: 1.800 μ.
Tasting Notes: dried mango • apricot • black tea

Ethiopia — Magarissa Reripa #3
Region: West Arsi
Variety: Welisho, Kurume
Process: Washed
Altitude: 2,000 m.
Tasting notes: apricot marmalade • caramel • citric

Honduras — Caballero Tanairi
Region: Marcala
Variety: Catuai
Process: Natural
Altitude: 1,800 m.
Tasting notes: cacao • dark cherry • vanilla

El Salvador — Buena Vista
Region: Santa Ana
Variety: Bourbon
Process: Natural
Altitude: 1,600 m.
Tasting notes: red berry • jammy • winey

Why this matters

We could buy coffee without ever leaving Athens. Samples arrive by post, we cup them in our roastery, we place orders online. Many roasters work this way, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

But tasting coffee at source — sitting next to the importer who visited the farm, comparing fifty lots from the same origin side by side, discussing processing methods with roasters who’ve been buying from that washing station for a decade — gives us context that no sample bag can provide. It helps us understand not just what a coffee tastes like, but why it tastes that way, and how to roast it so that character comes through in your cup.

This is what we mean when we say we’re handpickers. We don’t buy from a catalogue. We travel, we taste, and we choose — one lot at a time.

What's next

These four coffees will arrive at our roastery in Kallithea over the coming [weeks/months] as the new harvest is processed and shipped. We’ll roast them in small batches on our Loring, profile each one to bring out its best qualities, and release them as they’re ready.

If you want to be the first to try them, our [subscription] is the easiest way — new arrivals go to subscribers before they hit the shop. Or keep an eye on our [Instagram] and [newsletter] for release announcements.

In October, we’ll be back in Oslo for Autumn Cupping, tasting the next wave of harvests. The cycle continues.