THE GALLERY Café
OPEN MAY - OCTOBER
Try our coffee!
The Gallery uses Grade 1, Shade or partial-shade-grown, single origin, organic and 'traded fairly' coffee. We stock Westport's own locally roasted coffee, from expert roasters; Bean West as well as from specialist growers and cooperatives, and help support local businesses from the ground up.
A place to meet, share and have a good time
Hi Coffee Lovers
I'm passionate about great tasting ethically sourced coffee, and like to know:
- Where the coffee beans come from
- Who grows the coffee and how that impacts their lives
- How clean and pure the coffee is
- How the coffee tastes
- That it is bird-friendly coffee
The journey from bean to cup can span thousands of miles so I spent time considering what type of coffee would best fit The Gallery. It has to be organic (and certified to prove it), it has to be Fairtrade and it has to be of the highest standard, which is why I use 'Bird Friendly' coffee. It must be free from pesticides and toxins and give back to the community where it is grown.
Café open MAY to OCTOBER
Try out new coffee and teas each week!
Totally exclusive in Westport!
Cherry pie, local apple pie, pecan cookies, cinnamon rolls...using ancient Irish organic grains!
As well as using the most ethical beans I can get my hands on, I figured I'd look for a machine that consumes less power than the big beasts that adorn many a coffee shop, something that suits the needs of The Gallery.
As a result, I use a 'Ponte Vecchio' Lusso, a two-group, traditional Italian lever pull machine, widely reputed to offer excellent coffee extraction, plus, it looks very stylish and is super fun to use!
As a result, I use a 'Ponte Vecchio' Lusso, a two-group, traditional Italian lever pull machine, widely reputed to offer excellent coffee extraction, plus, it looks very stylish and is super fun to use!
The Gallery uses a NICHE coffee grinder, one of the quietest grinders available (only 72db) It uses the superb 63mm Kony conical burr with virtually zero coffee residue between grinds. What does this mean?
This means that each cup of coffee tastes as fresh as possible, is ground and pulled through to order. Current grinders often trap large amounts of coffee in their grind chambers. As we know, ground coffee starts to go stale in a matter of seconds. So your coffee is being tainted by the old trapped stale grind. With this in mind, the Niche Zero Grinder’s unique grind path has been developed to retain virtually no grind and give you the freshest grind every time.
The Gallery is the first coffee shop in Ireland to ban any single-use takeaway cups!
The Gallery Café, Wine & Tapas Bar in Westport, only sell (since 2017) ‘takeaway’ coffee in ceramic mugs, I believe we are the first café to do so in Ireland!
Let me explain. Headlines such as ‘guilt-free coffee’ or ‘environmentally friendly coffee’, just because a company or organisation has started using biodegradable takeaway cups, are quite simple, untrue and equally misleading. How can a single-use product, that uses the earth’s resources, be deemed ‘environmentally friendly’? This is pure irony. Any product that has a toll, no matter how small on the planet, by definition, can only be referred to as ‘Less Environmentally Damaging’ (a term I coined over ten years ago). Even a biodegradable cup has to be manufactured and transported in the first place! It makes zero sense.
The Gallery sells LED products, so if you’d like your Bird-Friendly coffee in a takeaway cup, please, bring your own, or feel free to get one in super stylish, and LED donated cups! Click here for an older post about biodegradable plastics. It’s from 2010 and let’s hope that tech has moved on since then to manufacture better quality and more widely and effective biodegradable products, still, less is more, just don’t create the need for a takeaway cup in the first place!
Let me explain. Headlines such as ‘guilt-free coffee’ or ‘environmentally friendly coffee’, just because a company or organisation has started using biodegradable takeaway cups, are quite simple, untrue and equally misleading. How can a single-use product, that uses the earth’s resources, be deemed ‘environmentally friendly’? This is pure irony. Any product that has a toll, no matter how small on the planet, by definition, can only be referred to as ‘Less Environmentally Damaging’ (a term I coined over ten years ago). Even a biodegradable cup has to be manufactured and transported in the first place! It makes zero sense.
The Gallery sells LED products, so if you’d like your Bird-Friendly coffee in a takeaway cup, please, bring your own, or feel free to get one in super stylish, and LED donated cups! Click here for an older post about biodegradable plastics. It’s from 2010 and let’s hope that tech has moved on since then to manufacture better quality and more widely and effective biodegradable products, still, less is more, just don’t create the need for a takeaway cup in the first place!
What is shade-grown coffee and why should we be informed about it?
Traditionally, coffee was grown commercially under other trees that provided shade. Indeed, in its natural wild state, coffee much prefers shade in the heat of the tropics.
However, since the 1970s, new sun-tolerant coffee plants have been developed with the aim to yield higher production rates to produce larger yields through higher-density, open planting over huge areas of land.
Unfortunately, this cultivation practice of open planting is completely unsustainable, destroys the land through overexposure to the sun, and has a negative impact on the environment that is not talked enough about.
- As a result of environmental degradation, the concept of shade-grown coffee, a return to traditional coffee farming, was born. A canopy of assorted types of shade trees is created to cultivate shade-grown coffee, which incorporates principles of natural ecology to promote natural ecological relationships.
- Indeed, recent research points to a direct correlation between the structural complexity of a coffee plantation and the number of species found. In short, shade-grown coffee increases biodiversity. It’s a no-brainer really and similar to what we see with other monocultures that destroy biodiversity.
- The forest-like structure of shade-grown coffee farms provides a habitat for a great number of migratory and resident birds, reptiles, ants, butterflies, bats, plants, and other organisms. Actually, of all agricultural land uses, shade-grown coffee supports the highest diversity of migratory birds, native flora, and fauna.
- It helps plant diversity with typically 90 to 120 species of plant and 13 to 58 species of tree on a single site. Herb diversity is typically 3 to 4 times higher as well.
- It helps insect diversity with 609 species of insect found in a Shade Grown Coffee site in Mexico.
- It helps both native and migratory bird species diversity. For example, 184 bird species (including 46 migratory bird species) were found on a single Shade Grown Coffee site in Mexico.
- This compares with as few as 6-12 bird species found in unshaded coffee monocultures.
- In a study of shade vs. sun coffee comparisons in Guatemala, overall bird abundance and diversity were 30% greater, respectively, in shaded farms than in sun farms. Indeed, shade-grown trees housed two-thirds of the bird species found in natural forests in the same geographic area.
- Shade Grown Coffee promotes mammal diversity. For example, a Shade Grown Coffee site in India found 28 species of mammals in one site alone.
- Many species of bees are attracted to shaded polycultures that have a variety of flowering plants in addition to coffee. In a shade-grown study in Indonesia, bee populations rose by 90%.
- It protects the soil. The presence of canopy and midstory vegetation in shaded polycultures helps reduce soil erosion as well as stabilize steep, mountainous slopes. Typically, soil moisture is 42% lower in unshaded plantations than in shaded plantations and there is significantly less runoff of surface water in shaded plantations than in unshaded plantations.
- It acts as a carbon sink. Just like natural forests, the carbon sequestered in a shade‐grown coffee farm’s shade trees will be stored in the tree trunks, limbs, leaves, and roots of the foliage as opposed to being in the atmosphere and adding to global warming.
So, the conclusion here is greater densities of birds, mammals, plants, trees, and insects are found in shade-grown coffee sites than in local natural habitats. This is most likely due to the greater abundance of bird-dispersed fruit trees, flowering plants, and insects found in the shade sites.
Bird communities in traditional polycultures are composed mainly of canopy species feeding on fruit, insects, and nectar. In addition to the animal and plant diversity, being farmed organically, there are no pesticides to kill species diversity. The diversity and harmony found in shaded polycultures allow for relatively complex food webs to form. Birds and mammals alike play a large role in pest control by eating many herbivorous insects.
An example of this is in Jamaica. In one coffee plantation, birds were excluded and this rapidly resulted in a 70% increase in coffee berry borer pest infections in coffee plants.
Another example is in Puerto Rico, which used enclosure plots to exclude lizards, but this only resulted in an increase in leafminers - an insect that is a serious pest to coffee plants.
Evidently, shade-grown coffee is a no-brainer really, yet there are still far too few shade-grown coffee plantations and we need to shout out about this and grow this movement towards greater biodiversity on our coffee plantations, for the benefit of local people and the planet in general.
Bird communities in traditional polycultures are composed mainly of canopy species feeding on fruit, insects, and nectar. In addition to the animal and plant diversity, being farmed organically, there are no pesticides to kill species diversity. The diversity and harmony found in shaded polycultures allow for relatively complex food webs to form. Birds and mammals alike play a large role in pest control by eating many herbivorous insects.
An example of this is in Jamaica. In one coffee plantation, birds were excluded and this rapidly resulted in a 70% increase in coffee berry borer pest infections in coffee plants.
Another example is in Puerto Rico, which used enclosure plots to exclude lizards, but this only resulted in an increase in leafminers - an insect that is a serious pest to coffee plants.
Evidently, shade-grown coffee is a no-brainer really, yet there are still far too few shade-grown coffee plantations and we need to shout out about this and grow this movement towards greater biodiversity on our coffee plantations, for the benefit of local people and the planet in general.
BLACKHOUSE BAKERY
You have to try her
Cherry Pie!
Cherry Pie!
Inspired by David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks' series!
twin peaks
Twin Peaks is a small logging town in northeastern Washington State, five miles south of the Canadian border and twelve miles west of the state line with Idaho. Twin Peaks drew its name from the two mountains between which it lay, White Tail and Blue Mountain.
Twin Peaks is a small logging town in northeastern Washington State, five miles south of the Canadian border and twelve miles west of the state line with Idaho. Twin Peaks drew its name from the two mountains between which it lay, White Tail and Blue Pine Mountain
Cherry Pie