FEATURED
February 09, 2026 — Lauren Scratch
5 min read
Often when speaking with coffee roasters, terroir is brought up as one of the qualities that makes a specific coffee special. With the 3 coffees featured this month, their uniqueness is absolutely related to their unique terroir. So, what does terroir really mean?
This article is from our February 2017 issue where we included this amazing answer from Lee Knuttila, the lead roaster and green buyer at Cut Coffee (along with a fantastic El Sal that he roasted). We loved this answer so much we had to post it online for all to see.
Every Monday morning we understand the magical properties of a cup of coffee as it gives us that boost to get the week started. However, does drinking it do more for you and your taste-buds than what you originally anticipated?
When we went to visit one of our featured roasters from the September issue, Propeller Coffee Co., outside of the front of their café/roaster was an entertaining sign that read: “They say money can’t buy happiness. We say money can buy coffee. And that’s pretty close. Happiness Brewing here.”
It got us thinking. We dug into some scientific journals to see if there were any studies out there that helped answer this question: Does coffee improve happiness?
If you haven’t heard of Kopi Luwak, you might know it by what it’s most commonly called – “that cat poo coffee”.
It’s an Indonesian coffee product that has garnered a lot of attention specifically for the fact that a cat/raccoon like animal, the Asian Palm Civet, eats the coffee berry and digests it. From there the coffee is extracted from the excrement, roasted and brewed. Something that has been defecated ruins all preconceived notions of what should taste good - however it’s garnered the allure and the reputation of being the tastiest coffee available.
