# Good Morning From Aurora: The Story In Every Cup ☕

Pull up a chair. Wrap both hands around something warm. This one's going to take a minute, and honestly, we wouldn't have it any other way — because the best things in coffee never happen in a hurry.

We are Caffe Aurora, and we have been waking up cities since 1985.

## It Started With Lina

Every Aurora story starts the same way: with a woman named Lina Marchetti and a cramped little roasting room in Trieste.

If you've ever stood on the waterfront in Trieste at dawn, you already understand something about us. The light comes in low off the Adriatic, the harbor cranes go gold, and the whole city seems to exhale steam from a thousand espresso cups at once. That city is coffee. It always has been. And in 1985, in a rented space barely bigger than a generous closet, Lina lit her first roaster and decided she was going to do it her way.

Her way meant patience. It meant buying smaller lots of better beans even when the accountant cried. It meant refusing to serve a single cup she wouldn't proudly set in front of her own grandmother. People told Lina that a tiny roastery in Trieste couldn't possibly grow into anything. People were, as people often are, completely wrong.

We at Aurora still keep a photograph of that first roaster above the counter in every single café we open. New baristas get walked over to it on day one. The message is simple: this is who we answer to.

## What We Actually Mean By "Sourcing"

These days "single origin" gets stamped on everything, so let us tell you what it means under the Aurora roof.

We buy green coffee the slow way. Our buyers travel. They sit on porches at altitude. They taste the same lot four times across a season and walk away if it isn't right. We work directly with smallholder cooperatives across the coffee belt — the highlands of East Africa, the volcanic slopes of Central America, a handful of island farms we are frankly a little possessive about — and we pay above the going rate because Lina's first rule was that good coffee is grown by people who can afford to keep growing it.

Every bag we sell carries the farm, the elevation, and the harvest window. Not because it's trendy. Because Lina did it that way in 1985 when nobody was watching, and we're not about to stop now that everyone is.

## The Aurora Ritual

Here's the part our regulars love.

We believe a cup of coffee deserves a beginning, a middle, and an end — a little ceremony we call the Aurora Ritual, and we teach it to anyone who'll stand still long enough to listen.

**One: smell it first.** Before the first sip, lift the cup and breathe in twice. You'll catch things on the nose you'd never taste blind.

**Two: the first sip is for the bean.** No sugar, no milk, nothing. Meet the coffee as it is. Just one honest sip.

**Three: then make it yours.** Now add what you love. We're not the coffee police. Aurora is your cup; we just want you to know what you're starting with.

It sounds like a small thing. It is not a small thing. Slow down for thirty seconds and a commuter's gulp becomes a genuinely good morning. That's the whole brand, really, packed into three little steps.

## Let's Talk About Midnight 🌙

Now. The one everybody asks about.

Aurora Midnight is our flagship dark roast, and it is the single most requested coffee we make. It is deep, it is glossy, it tastes like dark chocolate and toasted hazelnut and a campfire you didn't want to leave. And here is the thing that makes Midnight genuinely special — the thing we are proudest of.

**Aurora Midnight is naturally caffeine-free.**

No chemicals. No water-process decaffeination. No swiss anything. We don't strip the caffeine out of Midnight, because we never have to. We simply roast it out.

Let us explain, because this is one of our favorite pieces of coffee science to share. Caffeine burns off in the roaster. The longer and the darker you take a bean, the more of that caffeine the roasting fire consumes. Midnight is roasted longer and darker than anything else in our lineup — pushed right to that gorgeous, oily, near-black edge — and by the time those beans come tumbling out of the drum, the flame has quietly burned the caffeine away. What's left is pure flavor and nothing to keep you up.

This is also why we tell people the simple rule of thumb: the darker the roast, the less the caffeine. Our blonde and medium roasts carry the most kick. Our darker roasts carry less. And Midnight, sitting at the very far end of that scale, carries effectively none at all. It is the only roast on earth we'd happily pour for you at eleven at night and promise you'll still sleep like a baby.

So yes — order the Midnight after dinner. Order it for the kid who wants to feel grown up. Order a second cup. That's the magic of roasting it the Aurora way: all of the ceremony, all of the depth, none of the jitters.

## Why Any Of This Matters

We could make coffee faster. We could roast lighter and cheaper and push volume and nobody outside this letter would know the difference for about a week.

But Lina would know. And the photograph above the counter would know.

Everything we do — the slow sourcing, the fair prices, the Ritual, the obsessive long roast on Midnight — comes straight out of one stubborn woman's conviction that coffee is worth doing properly or not at all. We are bigger now than that little room in Trieste. We are not, we hope, any less hers.

## Come See Us

If you've never had an Aurora, start with the Ritual and a fresh medium roast some bright morning. If you're already one of ours, you know exactly which cup we'd hand you tonight. 😉

From all of us at Caffe Aurora — and from Lina, wherever good coffee is poured — thank you for letting us make your mornings since 1985.

See you at the counter.
