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C Story / Kate Shantal

Barista

Meets

COVID-19

ime-travelling back and it’s early spring of
2020, Moscow, Russia. The attention of the
local baristas is focused on the Russian
Barista Days (RBD) — the most significant
annual national coffee event. RBD holds a number of
championships, a fair and a bunch of captivating lectures
and seminars. The coffee shop I work at serves fer-
mented Colombia Wush Wush Monteverde for a batch
brew. It’s a rare coffee varietal, vibrant, tropical-fruity,
complex, with hints of alcohol. And it also costs around
125 dollars per kilo, which is way more expensive than
your usual batch-brew beans here. Yet we sell it for a
regular price, enabling our customers to experience how
versatile coffee, and shifting their perception of what
coffee can taste like. The pandemic agenda is far off the
news feed. So, when the situation rapidly gets worse, and
Moscow gets a lockdown on the 28th of March — it catch-
es the community off-guard. The idle time is a luxury
nobody can afford, even if it’s only a week. Yet one week
of a lockdown turns into an endless chain of questions.
What’s next? And how do we adapt to the new realms?

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