Kiwi coffee is tasting its 'best ever' - expert

Australian coffee consultant, Instaurator, is the head judge of the 2014 Huhtamaki New Zealand Coffee Awards. Photo / Michael Guy

New Zealand coffee is sophisticated, nuanced, and among the best in the world, according to a top coffee expert here to judge this year's coffee awards.

The Australian coffee consultant, who goes by the one-name moniker Instaurator, is the head judge of the 2014 Huhtamaki New Zealand Coffee Awards which will be announced tomorrow night.

The 12 judges will taste more than 300 coffees to crown the country's top roaster, and the Sydney-based coffee connoisseur said he already thinks this year's batch has beaten last year's.

"I'm really enjoying it, I don't say this lightly, but I think it's the best ever," Instaurator said.

"I think there's some really great coffees that people are doing a really good job with, because it's one thing to get a good coffee, but then to do it justice as a roaster and get the best out of it is another thing altogether. So for me there's a lot of improvement, I think, over previous years."

He was impressed by New Zealand coffee as a whole, and said he would rank it "very highly" in the world.

"I think there's a very sophisticated espresso-based culture," he said.

"But I think what's interesting is there's much more nuanced flavours, that you get much more sophisticated, refined flavours, and that's definitely coming through. It's quite exciting."

Compared to Europe or North America where "it's very rare that you find anywhere that has a decent coffee", in New Zealand "you actually don't have to go that far, you expect something decent", he said.

"That's a good coffee culture."

The only fault he had picked up on so far was a tendency of some roasters to follow international trends, he said.

"I think there's some, not many, that follow the trends like Scandinavian or North American super light, almost under roasted style," Instaurator said.

"I think they are probably not doing coffee justice. They're actually following a fashion rather than following the flavour."

He added: "I think what Kiwis do well is following their own intuition rather than following international fashion, and making the fashion themselves and I think that's what's good, and not losing their really solid culture of espresso-based coffee which is very, very good."

Instaurator couldn't say which region the best coffee was coming out of - avoiding upsetting Aucklanders or Wellingtonians, in what he likened to the Sydney-Melbourne rivalry - as each tasting is "a double blind", with no details of the roaster or where they're from.

"I think it's important to stress it is a double-blind, so completely objective," he said.

"So far I couldn't tell you which is which, but there are some great coffees."

He was also looking forward to tasting "a nice, good New Zealand wine", to balance out all the coffee.

• The 2014 Huhtamaki New Zealand Coffee Awards will be announced at a ceremony tomorrow night at the Bell Tea and Coffee headquarters in Auckland.