Len Brault

A 25-year veteran of marketing and design, he decided in 2005 that he would turn his strengths to the beverage he loved and began a pilgrimage to find the "original" coffees that he had once loved so much more than the modern-day hybrids and unidimensional Arabicas that seemed to permeate the landscape. He would find the best heirloom coffees that remained largely undiscovered and unchanged by Western influence and showcase these coffees on the Internet. The search led him to Southeast Asian coffees (primarily Vietnamese and Philippine), established a century or more ago and still being cultivated, processed and brewed locally in traditional manners from an era gone by, unknown to the industry, markets, and media in the USA and Canada. Since that time Len has evaluated thousands of coffees in a continuing search for the original, traditional, and unspoiled, and expanded to unique Latin American coffees as well. He has undertaken the task of writing about these coffees, the cultures from which they came, and the manners in which they are brewed and enjoyed. His comment? "It's a rough job, but somebody has to do it." His company, Len's Coffee, is devoted to helping indigenous producers gain access to international distribution under their own brand names so that they achieve the most "fair" of all trades, which is, eliminating commodities brokers and receiving all the fruits of their own labors. The overriding principle that guides his company is the belief that coffee, the second-highest-volume traded commodity in the world, has a tremendous and largely untapped potential to engineer social change and improve the quality of life for millions of people around the globe simply by the practice of making better choices, on the wholesale and consumer levels.