STiR coffee and tea magazine

42 STiR coffee and tea | 2025 Issue 1 Spring (Mar/Apr/May) By Fionn Pooler S cotland is a small country. With a population of just under 5.5 million, it has fewer residents than the American state of Wisconsin. Perched atop England, with the same latitude as parts of Alaska, it can feel a long way from anywhere. But over the past decade Scotland has developed a rather unique specialty coffee and tea scene, taking inspiration from Scandinavia and Australasia and mixing in some definitively Scottish charm. It has taken a while to get to this point—the first specialty-focused coffee roaster, Artisan Roast, opened in 2007—but today, good coffee can be found in some very out-of-the-way places. There are specialty roasters and cafes nestled in the Highlands and on islands like the Hebrides, Shetland, and Skye, as well as all across the country's urban centers. In much the same way, Scotland's tea scene has grown from one dominated by big brands offering pretty unremarkable blends to include many boutique tea companies and even a small but growing number of commercial tea gardens dotted around the country. Much of this evolution in both the coffee and tea sectors can be put down to the country's developing food scene and internationalization more broadly, which has led to interest in higher-quality products of all sorts. Combined with the always-growing demand from abroad for authentic Scottishness, it has allowed a relatively small coffee and tea scene to punch well above its weight. A Small and Intimate Scene In the early 2000s, a visitor searching for a good coffee in Scotland would be hard- pressed to find anything at all. There were chains like Costa Coffee and Caffe Nero, local cafes serving cakes to grannies, and the odd independent roaster plugging away with a very small customer base, but not much else. While south of the border com- panies like Prufrock, Hasbean, and Square Mile were pushing the coffee scene to ever- greater heights, Scotland still seemed stuck in the second wave. That began to change in 2007 when Artisan Roast opened in Edinburgh, followed a few years later by Glasgow's Dear Green Coffee Roasters, Steampunk Coffee Roast- ers in North Berwick, and Glen Lyon Coffee Roasters in Aberfeldy in the Highlands. Scotland's Piping Hot Coffee and Tea Scenes The popular Glasgow Coffee Festival introduces more and more Scottish people to specialty coffee each year. Photo courtesy the 2022 Glasgow Coffee Festival Dear Green Coffee Roasters founder Lisa Lawson organized the first Glasgow Coffee Festival in 2014. Photo courtesy Dear Green Coffee Roasters "There was very little in the way of spe- cialty coffee in Scotland back in early 2011 and nothing in the Highlands," says Fiona Grant, founder of Glen Lyon Cof- fee. "Within a couple of years, a hand- ful of other specialty roasters set up in Scotland, and in those early years, it was a pretty small and intimate scene." Those trailblazers have since inspired a growing number of new specialty roast- ers to open around the country, which has, in turn, led to a huge increase in the

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