STiR coffee and tea 13
NEWS
Erna Knutsen Specialty Pioneer
Specialty coffee pioneer Erna Knutsen,
96, passed away in June.
Knutsen, the first female green
coffee trader in the US, is credited with
coining the term "specialty coffee" and
was the first recipient of the Specialty
Coffee Association (SCA) Award for
Lifetime Achievement in 1991.
Erna Knutsen
"What a wonderful life, thank
you very, very much," she said at
the time. "It's been a thrill, even
though I was kept out of the
cupping room and the roaster
because I was a woman," she
said. "They were all men and they
decided that women didn't
deserve a break, but I fooled
them. I bought the company and
fired them all."
"Erna's humor, intelligence,
and love of the finer things in life
matched perfectly with a man she
met through the coffee business
in the 1980s by the name of John
Rapinchuk who later became
Erna's husband," writes Sherri
John. "They spent the next 30
years discovering new restaurants,
traveling the world, and ultimately
working together at Knutsen
Coffees until his death in 2016,"
she said.
Donations in Knutsen's name,
can be made at Café Femenino:
www.cafefemenino.com
Knutsen was born in 1921 in a small
Norwegian village above the Arctic
Circle. Her father emigrated from
Norway to New York alone, working in
the shipyards and saving his money for
two years until he could bring his wife
and daughters Clara, Erna, and Anne to
join him in 1927.
Erna first worked as a secretary at a
Wall Street firm but welcomed the
opportunity to relocate to San Francisco
where she was employed by a coffee, tea,
and spice trading house. Her passion for
coffee led her to pursue a job as a trader
in the 1970s and in 1985 she founded
Knutsen Coffees, Ltd. buying out her
former employers to become the first
woman trader in the US
Her dedication to quality led her to
differentiate commodity coffee from
distinctive tasting, defect-free "specialty"
grades. She became a worldwide name in
the business, winning many awards. "One
of her most valued honors was the Golden
Coffee Bean awarded her by Norway
when she was in her 80's. In 2014 she was
honored at SCA's opening ceremonies.
