Whistler is blessed with several great coffee shops. This is good because not only do I love the bean, but tend to get a lot of work done in the noisy places it’s vended. I suspect my tolerance has something to do with all that communal living in the 1970s. A few of my books are dedicated to coffee shops I wrote them in; some have reciprocated by hanging articles I wrote about them on their walls. It’s a symbiotic relationship based on my ardour for java and a shop’s dedication to the art of dispensing it in copacetic surroundings. And that’s where I thought it ended: you keep looking for coffee shops that are better and better at combining these two ingredients. But after stepping into Craft 42 Roasters, a one-of-a-kind coffee shop in a quiet corner of north Kelowna last winter, I found it’s just the beginning, that there’s an entire world of coffee as experience.
Craft 42’s bright and airy interior ensures minimal deterrence from the task at hand—tasting and enjoying rarified coffees. Even the aroma emanating from a roaster at room’s end plays less as distraction than a focusing element for visitors. Here they’ll find partner proprietors Taylor MacInnis and Aaron Moore—accompanied by the occasional small child—measuring, brewing, pouring and pulling coffee in a meticulous choreography more reminiscent of science demonstrations than the hustle of get-’em-in-get-’em-out coffee franchises. It’s both refreshing and enlightening—and the story began long before they roasted a single bean.
Number 42, it seems, was the address of a cherished childhood home from which attendant family values of compassion, respect, education and light-hearted play were transmuted into a business philosophy when the pair started an online coffee company dedicated to both the very best of the bean and the very best of intentions. Placing a premium on quality, ethical sourcing and climate action, every roast considered the fairness of the wage of the person who picked the beans as well as environmental impacts of the bag it went in. The ethos was carried forward in the dream of a brick-and-mortar outlet in what proved the perfect spot—midpoint for folks walking, running or cycling the city’s popular Okanagan Rail Trail. That Craft 42 became an immediate respite celebrated by self-propelled locals on foot or bike suited the owners’ environmental outlook, but the main draw was its wide-range of coffee and the way it was handled. Customers understood they were in for a treat.
As local accolades piled up, Craft 42 received international recognition by placing third in 2023’s prestigious Forward Lottery Competition of the world’s best roasters. Shipped a bag of premium green coffee beans from parts unknown to play with, Craft 42 ultimately submitted and was anonymously judged on their interpretation of a roasted product.
That they bested 77 of 80 competitors spoke volumes but didn’t surprise customers used to a menu highlighting competition-quality beans from Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Kenya and Ethiopia that evoke no end of buzzwords in Aaron’s detailed explanations: natural carbonic maceration… washed thermal shock anaerobic fermentation… tribal-dance stomping. Specific relationships with quality growers are also important, such as venerable Daterra farm in Brazil’s famed Cerrado savannah ecoregion, an icon that leads by example—the world’s only certified B-Corp coffee farm, with a litany of awards and a mandate to become climate-positive. The best part? It’s a relationship you can taste.
If you visit an Okanagan winery you might take a few bottles home with you, but you’re mostly there for the tasting-room experience; ditto flights of different brews served in the booming craft beer scene. And since variables that apply to the nuances of wine and beer—climate, soil, processing—also apply to coffee, Craft 42’s idea of a coffee-tasting room not only makes sense, but provides a truly unique experience. “In wine, about 200 flavour notes are detectable to the human palette; in coffee, there are over 800,” Aaron tells me, adding, “You can’t untaste a really good coffee.”
And indeed I cannot after sampling toffee-tinged Danche light roast from Ethiopia, tropical-fruit forward Granja Parasio 92 Silver light roast from Colombia, and chocolatey medium-roast Daterra Decaf. For a reasonable fee you can enjoy a guided taste of three coffees in a format of your choosing—e.g., pour-over, press, espresso—or the same coffee varietal prepared in three different styles. You’ll learn about tasting notes, farmers, roasting and how to best brew at home. “People are just going crazy over the tastings,” Taylor noted, “because that’s what people can relate to here in the Okanagan.”
The analogy seems apt. “I think 99 per cent of the world has commodity coffee and one per cent specialty coffee,” says Aaron. “We’re not fighting for that one per cent but working within it—exchanging coffee lots and ideas with other roasters. It’s very much like craft breweries—working together to improve everyone’s experience.”
Further odes to sustainability include bringing in your own coffee canister or reusable coffee bags for a discount on beans, or high-quality branded apparel featuring recycled/organic materials and fair wages from female-owned Ungalli Clothing. In the end, however, it’s really all about having more fun with coffee: “We’re basically trying to say, look, it’s really just hot brown liquid,” muses Aaron, “so why not enjoy it as many ways as you can?”
Leslie Anthony is a biologist, writer and author of several popular books on environmental science.
