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MEANDERING THROUGH RUSSIA'S famed Red Square, she gestures wildly with her hands, her voice rising and falling as she talks fervently about her love of coffee, which she practices daily as a roaster for Soyuz Coffee Roasting, and as a champion brewer. She is here at the beginning of September for the third year in a row to take part in Soyuz's annual Specialty Coffee Show Starring Champion Baristas, a weeklong coffee extravaganza designed to entice traditionally tea-drinking Muscovites into converting to specialty coffee. It's still a few hours before today's coffee service begins, so we're strolling through Red Square together, appreciating the grandeur surrounding us as we chat about coffee, baristas, and Soyuz's—as well as Asli's—vision for the future of specialty coffee in Russia. When I question Asli about possible clashes between her Turkish roots and her Russian career—considering the historical strife between the two countries—she simply waves me away. "We have different languages, cultures, traditions, but I still feel that I am at home in Russia," says Asli, who has lived in Kaliningrad where Soyuz's roaster is located, for three years. "Kaliningrad is really like my second home. I think the main reason is that I have such great colleagues and friends. Since the beginning, whenever I needed some help, there was always somebody near me, helping me." I think a lot of this has to do with Asli as a person though; she is strong not only for a woman, but for a person in general. She is in many ways fearless. While we walk, passersby turn as they hear her melodic speaking voice—Russians out in public tend to be quiet and reserved. This is the opposite of Asli. The only qualms she had about entering the Turkish Brewers Cup Championship in 2013 were based on whether she would represent Soyuz—one of Russia's fastest growing specialtycoffee companies—well. She is a perfectionist and a high achiever. Of course, she won. Asli and her team—led by Soyuz directors Regina Vasilyeva and Drago Lakic—hardly took a breath after the win before barreling into preparations for the World Brewers Cup, which would take place in Melbourne, Australia, in June of 2013. Asli trained night and day in Kaliningrad on her own, with trainer and friend Stefanos Domatiotis—multi-time barista champion of Greece— when he visited to work with her, and for two straight weeks with Stefanos in Brooklyn where they developed her roast profile and perfected her technique. Asli is wound tight on a daily basis, so imagine her in Melbourne days before the world championship. She was smart enough not to fall to pieces from the stress, however, and found comfort in her friends—Drago accompanied her—and her desire to befriend her fellow competitors. Today she remarks with intensity how much her world expanded when she saw coffee from the perspective of so many international champions. "It made me fall in love with coffee even more," she says. "I will never be finished with learning, and that is something so exciting to me." We are in Moscow for Soyuz's annual coffee show, which attracts tens of thousands of Russians who are curious about the espresso being served, not to mention the people serving it: Gathered here are Italian Barista Champion Francesco Sanapo; World Barista Champion Pete Licata of the United States; 2011 World Latte Art 56 barista magazine Champion Christos Loukakis of Greece; El Salvadoran Barista Champion William Hernandez; past Spanish Barista Champion Javier Garcia; World Coffee In Good Spirits Champion Victor Delpierre; 2011 World Barista Champion Alejandro Mendez of El Salvador; and of course, Stefanos of Greece. These all-star baristas are assembled to make great coffee and provide entertainment for the Russian consumers; it's a nonstop party every night in the Soyuz tent on Red Square for the entire week. There's a bubble in the party, however, where the pace decelerates: This is Asli's slow bar, where she makes coffee on Chemex, AeroPress, Kalita Wave, and Hario V60, for the fascinated Muscovites who likely have never seen coffee brewed with such precision. She holds out a Chemex before brewing so they can sniff the grounds, and she answers hundreds of questions about technique and coffee selection. She loves every minute of it. Asli is very much in the moment every day of her life. Her zeal affords focus for her favorite things, with her friends, her family, and her captivation with coffee topping the list. But still, she's a dreamer: She's traveled the world and she still wants more; she aspires to open a coffee academy in her home city of Istanbul, but she has a lot she wants to achieve before then. She will compete in the Turkish Brewers Cup again, and try her hand at the barista competition as well. As for her work at Soyuz, she can't imagine life without it; she is stimulated by the energy of her coworkers, and Drago and Regina's vision for the future. She revels in living in the heart of things—that's simply Asli's way. You'll believe me then, when I say the conversation Asli and I had for this interview extended well beyond the space I have for it here in print, so I urge you to visit www.baristamagazine.com/blog to read the interview in its entirety. You'll hear Asli's lyrical tenor through her words, I'm sure of it. Sarah Allen: Turkey has such a long history of coffee. What was coffee like in the house where you grew up? Asli Yaman: My older relatives bought their coffee as green and roasted it at home in the pan, then cooled it in a newspaper, and then ground it before brewing the coffee. When there was the economic crisis in the world after the second World War, people couldn't find the coffee [they were used to getting] from Brazil and they had to use chickpeas instead of or mixed with coffee beans. I remember my father telling me that importing instant coffee to the country was prohibited and so people were bringing it in their suitcases. After 1983, economical policies changed and we started to have more imported products. Maybe as a result of this, people started to buy more ready-made products, especially after 1990. I clearly remember that my mother was buying the milk from the district man who was coming to our area weekly. She was boiling the milk and then using it. So the same thing happened to Turkish coffee. People started buying ground coffee. Moreover, there is a very famous roaster in one of the historical places in Istanbul: a family-owned company, Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi's Eminonu. They still have this shop very close to the spice market. When you are close to that area, you can smell the roasted coffee, and still today people, including me, are buying fresh Turkish coffee there. I think when I was at high school I started to drink coffee. Before that, growing up in a tea-drinking country, tea was the major hot