February 2025: Podium Platinum. Reprise Coffee

Wilton owns Granja Paraíso 92, a cutting-edge coffee farm and processing facility in the Cauca region of Colombia. His operations focus on specialty coffee, with a reputation for experimental and precise methods that include anaerobic fermentation, thermal shock washing, and meticulous quality control processes. These methods enhance the flavor profile of his coffees, often highlighting vibrant tropical fruit notes and unique complexities like passion fruit, pineapple, and tamarind.

His coffees are celebrated globally for their innovation and exceptional quality.In this month's Podium Platinum coffee, Wilton Benitez puts his spin on a classic creating a deep & enveloping coffee with buckets of sweet & candied fruit notes. The only way we can describe it uses the word, “medley” in every phrase.

This coffee, combined with Julio Madrid’s Nitro Nebula, won a gold medal for Reprise Coffee in the milk-based espresso category and a gold medal for the filter category at Golden Bean 2024.

The Roaster:

Reprise Coffee Roasters, based in Evanston, Illinois, is a vibrant, community-focused coffee business with a passion for sustainability and high-quality coffee. The company started its journey with a roastery and café in Winnetka and has expanded to a welcoming 1,500-square-foot café in Evanston.

Reprise takes pride in being coffee grower-, roaster-, and barista-owned. They source most of their beans from Gold Mountain Coffee Growers, a direct trade farming group that connects farmers of exquisite specialty coffees in Nicaragua with roasters.

The devastating reality of the coffee economy is that most farmers are restricted by the artificially low cost of coffee and can’t live a dignified life.

Gold Mountain was created to fight poverty through quality coffee, and they’re doing an amazing of a job of it.

Reprise's many coffee accolades include being the reigning Small Chain Overall Champions, as well as 4 x gold medallists at Golden Bean.