The Beginnings
Established in 1993, Rebecca & John Zentveld moved from Melbourne back to John’s family farm to set up Zentveld’s coffee roastery. In their few years in Melbourne, they developed an appreciation of good coffee (well, who wouldn’t), paying attention to roast profiles and cup offerings from Melbourne’s renowned coffee roasting and cafe scene. Of course everything roasted, served and tasted in Melbourne was of foreign bean origin, but Rebecca wanted to set benchmarks for her roasting and desired cup profiles for the newly available Australian estate coffees. Meanwhile, John as a programmer and systems administrator ‘got a real job’ at local Southern Cross University; whilst Rebecca bought a 10kg roaster and set about learning to roast the local beans. Before the internet, without guidance or available roasting courses, it was hands on practice, learning by doing and tasting. It was a pretty unusual career change at age 23 and quite entrepreneurial to leave the city to start roasting pure Australian grown coffee, on the ‘in laws’ farm with only 5 other local growers established. This was before tree-changing or sea-changing was a thing, and well before the stream of millennial baristas-turned hipster coffee roasters became a thing.
It helped that John’s parent’s John Snr. & June Zentveld have a beautiful property in the hills behind Byron Bay, and were the local coffee entrepreneurs who pretty much established the local coffee growing industry from scratch just a few years before. J&JZ Senior worked closely with the Department of Agriculture and local agronomists to trial new varieties, figure out how to grow and to look after the coffee quality right from seed through growing, harvesting and processing to green bean. But that’s really glossing over the details. There was a lot of unknowns with new equipment to be sought and much risk taking in order to start a new agribusiness and encourage other growers to join in, so as to develop a sustainable, viable local coffee growing industry. One that would have to compete against much cheaper-produced, imported coffees of the developing world. So the coffee needed to be really good to gain decent value for their efforts. Based on the fact that we could indeed grow beautiful coffee in a particularly sustainable and ethical manner, (yes it’s a trope, but true) Rebecca set about learning to unlock the flavour potential of our local coffee. We’ve produced a few well tasty blends of Aussie beans to some renown since. Many a roaster, some respected coffee scientists, coffee tasters and Australian and international coffee companies have all visited our farm based roastery over the years. We love sharing and learning from them and always seek to be open to new ideas and their feedback. We want to be really good at what we do, and remain at the forefront of the Australian coffee industry, so we are open to new ideas for our long term production and sustainability.
Blessed with a cooler subtropical climate we grow our coffee naturally without harmful pesticides.
We just don’t have the pests and diseases that are prevalent in most coffee lands of hotter climates. Grown organically, bird friendly and increasingly worm friendly, our coffee growers find biological practices are better for the overall health of their soils, their coffee trees and the environment that they are caretakers of. As on our land, many growers have completed creek line rainforest regeneration and wildlife corridors for biodiversity. On Zentveld’s property we actively grow cover crops such as the legume pinto peanuts to add nitrogen back in the soil, and soft, low growing grasses to cool the soil and form a nice matt cover right up to the tree trunks to minimise mowing and weed growth. Why not reduce our inputs and carbon footprint if we can! Local growers use minimal water in processing compared to many coffee growing nations as we invest in the latest water saving equipment. We use all crop and ‘waste’ matter from processing and tree trimmings as mulch or compost, increasing the health of our soils. Being friendly with food producers, what is waste to one, is mulch to us, so we happily accept other organic material to mulch our 40 acres of coffee trees. With so few growers amidst horticultural diversity, there is no monoculture, or over-cropping across the few pockets of coffee growing in Australia. The sustainability and ‘green’ farming of our local coffee growers is something we can be quite proud of.
Zentveld’s are members of Soilcare and our land is registered with Land for Wildlife. We have a long history of putting our hand up for scientific trials and to implement new environmental strategies or analysis with both local and further afield Universities and the Department of Agriculture. Science and care of the environment go hand in hand, and we are happy to continue learning how best we can look after our soils, creek line and viable land for the sustainable future.