PORTLAND, Ore. – You don’t have to drink coffee at all to fall in love with coffee’s aroma at Coava on Grand, a coffee roaster in Portland’s Buckman neighborhood. It’s an industrial facility, but it welcomes visitors and even offers a tasting room, where two coffee selections and two espresso selections are offered daily.

Coava coffee roaster. Image by Tom Adkinson.

Instead of being a coffee shop (although there are pastries from two Portland bakeries), Coava is a place to really learn about coffee. Coava has deeply rooted relationships with growers it selects from around the globe based on agronomy analysis of every farm, farming protocols and the intangibles of friendship and collaboration. Sliding over you head in tubes headed to roasters are beans from Honduras, Nicaragua, Kenya, Ethopia, Colombia, Guatemala and Brazil.

Trip-planning resources: CoavaCoffee.com and TravelPortland.com