Alan's Corner

Hi everyone. As I sit at my desk looking out the window at the gray skies I am hoping that the weather forecast for tomorrow is as accurate as today's. At the moment Koralee will be at the Chesterfield Farmer's Market tomorrow and South of the James on Saturday. Each day we will be brewing two coffees, as usual, they are:

West Sumatra Highland-- a medium roast from a small Estate located high on the slopes of an active Volcano in Western Sumatra. Alun, Merdeka's Owner, hunted for this Estate over several days as it does not actively sell its green beans to local roasters. The hunt was worth-while,resulting in a coffee bean that gives hints of Almond during roasting and an after taste of ripe grapes and port.

Olde Sumatra Dark--Merdeka have blended some of the finest coffees that they have managed to source. The resulting blend is a fine testament to the most famous coffees of the world. This coffee is one of our best sellers and with it's lower caffeine levels can be drunk at any time of the day.

Sumatra coffees are world famous but how many times do you go into a coffee shop and see on the menu board "brewing today--Sumatra" The question should be, Sumatra what? In almost all instances they have no idea. We usually carry 6 coffees from different regions of Sumatra, all with a different taste. So next time you see Sumatra on the board ask the question and see what answer you get.

Turning now to my favorite sport, football(soccer). In my last blog I was talking about the US investment in Liverpool (John Henry) and Manchester United,(the Glazer Family). The US involvement in English soccer is growing all the time. The team I support, Arsenal, has a US General Manager, Ivan Gazidis, appointed 18 months ago having previously been the General Manager of Major League Soccer in the States. The largest investor is Stan Kroenke the owner of Kroenke Sports Enterprises which includes in its portfolio the St Louis Rams (NFL),Colorado Avalanche(NHL), Colorado Rapids(MLS) and the Denver Nuggets(NBA). Mr Kroenke currently owns 66.27% of Arsenal's shares. If he can reach 69% then under the stock exchange rules he must automatically make a bid for the outstanding balance. Unfortunately 29.25% is owned by a Russian billionaire, Alisker Asmanov, who would like to buy Mr Kroenke's shares, so we are at a stalemate with neither party willing to sell to the other.

English soccer club ownership is dominated by overseas investors some of which I will talk about in coming weeks.

Hopefully we will see you tomorrow. At the moment it is still dry and I can almost see the sun.