Barista Magazine

JUN-JUL 2014

Barista Magazine is your home for the worldwide community of coffee and the people who make it.

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P U L L : E V E N T S get to know each of their peers on an intimate level; activities are balanced to be both serious and educational as well as fun and social; and the spirit is unrelentingly encouraging and kind. When they arrive in Melbourne, Australia, in May to compete in their respective international championships, many of these Latte Art and Coffee In Good Spirits champions will be on their own; these flights are pretty expensive for many baristas to afford to bring a friend or ally. Imagine their delight when they realize they're surrounded by friends and allies, however—the comrades they made at DC Campus will cheer for them if they win, give them a sympathetic shoulder if they don't. The very nature of DC Campus is seemingly contradictory because it encourages the competitors to work as hard as they can to improve their skills while nurturing supportive relationships with their pears rather than viewing them as adversaries. I've never seen anything like it before. Case in point: France's 2013 Coffee In Good Spirits Champion (and the cover barista of the February+March 2014 issue of Barista Magazine) Victor Delpierre arrived at last year's DC Campus knowing only his French compatriot in latte art and one of the judges. Three days of practice, discussion, debate, and laughter later, Victor had more than 30 new friends. He didn't see them again until he arrived in Nice, France, to compete against many of them at the WCIGS, and when he was announced the winner, his DC Campus friends cheered for him the loudest. Victor maintains that he couldn't have won without the experience he had at the 2013 DC Campus. This year, Victor returned to share what he'd learned with a new group of national champions. He was among several Latte Art and Coffee In Good Spirits alums who made the trip to not only share their skills and philosophies, but reconnect with friends as well as their Dalla Corte family, which supported them before, during, and after their competitions. Antonella structured this year's DC Campus differently—not because there was anything wrong with previous installments, but because she understands the need to keep these intelligent, inquisitive baristas engaged, as well as satisfy their artistic appetites. As with previous DC Campus events, the majority of the days were spent behind the machines perfecting elaborate pours and crafting original, complicated coffee cocktails. Afternoons would see the group switching gears, as inventive competitions for the champions were dreamed up to challenge their skills. In one, reigning WLAC Champion, Japanese barista Hisako Yoshikawa, demonstrated her winning pour: an intricate rose surrounded by leaves. Then, the national latte art champions took turns trying to duplicate it without prior practice. In a fun but perplexing contest for the Coffee In Good Spirits Champs, Antonella crafted a mini supermarket filled with odd and unfamiliar ingredients where baristas had a limited time to select ingredients to then use in an original coffee cocktail. Mentally exhausted from the challenges 26 barista magazine B o o k 1 - 4 6 . i n d d 2 6 Book 1-46.indd 26 5 / 1 5 / 1 4 1 0 : 2 9 P M 5/15/14 10:29 PM

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