About Us

From an early age I was captivated by my parent’s countless stories about growing up in Italy. Although we had the good fortune to visit several times throughout my childhood, I always wondered whether part of the luster was simply due to the fact we were on vacation. It’s always different when you’re on vacation right? It came as no surprise to anyone that I jumped at the opportunity to pursue my education in Milan; but I had no idea that this would also lead to my lifelong love of coffee.

There, in a small neighborhood bar named Umberto, after the kindly owner; is where I learned to pull shots for some of the most worlds most scrupulous pallets. Italians take their coffee very seriously. Here I learned to make all manner of coffee drinks, from lattes, to cappuccinos, but of course, I was predominantly pulling good old-fashioned espressos. This is where I learned all the nuance of getting the perfect grind, frothing the perfect cream, and tamping the coffee down just right. I was hooked!

Later in life, my love of coffee led me to visit Central and South America to get a firsthand look at coffee farming, cultivation, and distribution right at the source. I was lucky enough to be joined by my wonderful sister who encouraged me to start this website as an outlet for my love of coffee. We’re looking forward to trying out a bunch of different coffees, and making a couple of silly videos along the way.

Being just a couple years younger than my older brother, I was stuck back home in the US while he was off galivanting around Italy. I’ve always loved technology. Ever since I was a little girl I would delight at wiping the floor with my brother’s friend’s when they would invariably underestimate my Playstation skills. This would eventually lead me down the path to web development and design. I also always had a passion for cinema, some of my greatest memories are when we would gather around the TV and watch a movie together. This would eventually lead to my other love, making videos! I studied videography as a minor and there were no ends to the dumb videos I make with my friends.

Like any other warm blooded American college student, I had more than my fair share of coffee from fine establishments like Starbucks and Intelligentsia. While he may be able to tell you the perfect temperature for an espresso, I don’t think he will every understand the joys of a venti soy latte with a double drizzle of caramel and chocolate! I like to think of myself as the New World counterpart to my brother’s Old World expertise.

For years I was green with envy that Michael got to live in Italy, but I could just never bring myself to leave the West Coast. I did however jump at the opportunity to visit central America for the first time when he told us of his trip while visiting over the holidays. While I was always a coffee lover, meeting and interacting with all the wonderful people on the coffee farms made me passionate about sustainable farming, fair trade, and direct trade coffee. It was while on this trip that I talked Michael out of writing a coffee table book (terrible idea!) and managed to convince him to start this website with me instead (great idea!).

Running a website isn’t free, but the main cost is really time and effort. A single article or video can take many hours or days to finalize and get ready for publication. With that in mind we have taken a few steps to try to monetize this website and offset some of the development and production costs. With that said, we are just normal people like you, and we share your hate of ads. Because of that, we solemnly promise to never bombard you with onerous or intrusive ads. We pledge that the few ads we have will be minimally intrusive.

Likewise, we do not accept paid endorsements, sponsored content, or paid insertion of any kind. Dressing up an ad in a better suit doesn’t make it any less an ad. Journalistic integrity is important to us, and we strive to remain neutral and unbiased in our reviews. Although we reach out to manufacturers and producers to request samples or demos for the purposes of reviewing them, we will never accept or sign any type of agreement that forces us to produce a positive review. We reserve the right to disclose any and all defaults found when reviewing the item. Those companies will in no way influence our content or our ratings. Additionally, many of the items we review are actually purchased out of pocket with our own money, and demos naturally often need to get sent back unless the dollar value is low. There is no other profitable incentive for us beyond your support as a shopper and YouTube viewer.

Other than ads, we get a small commission on affiliate links, such as links to Amazon or other such retailers. When you click one of our affiliate links and make a purchase we get a small payout at absolutely no extra cost to you. This commission fee comes out of the retailers profit, and is a small way you can help us keep the lights on here. When using our affiliate link, we will get a commission on any object you purchase, not just whatever product we’re reviewing. This means we have absolutely no incentive to push one product or another, our only incentive is to make sure you like and continue to use our website. This is why we prefer to use Amazon Associates as our source of income. This ensures the website is kept free of brand biased reviews. If you wish to support us you can do so by clicking the Amazon link below appropriate to your country and shop for your favorite products.