You probably won’t be a bit surprised when I tell you that Alison Anderson, the wife of coffee connoisseur Dave Anderson of the Roastery of Cave Creek (which sells coffee to many of the city’s best restaurants), has coffee in her blood — not to mention her bloodstream. Although she’s always had her own career, Anderson has traipsed around the globe with her bean-obsessed husband for years now, sniffing out the best organic coffees from Central America, South America, Africa and Indonesia and learning a lot about the coffee business in the process.
Just like the rest of us, she had a lot of time on her hands during lockdown last spring, but while you and I were watching movies and baking banana bread, Anderson was brewing an idea to start her own coffee company, her particular brand focusing on women coffee growers in an industry dominated by men. Anderson’s daughter Wade Johnson (who has her own career in Oxford, MS) immediately warmed to the idea, and the two women launched Exploradora (the feminine version of the Spanish word “scout” and an homage to Scout, the family pooch).
Thanks to their connections through husband/stepfather Dave and his roastery, Anderson and Johnson have forged relationships with women producers in countries such as Honduras, Guatemala, Peru, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, paying fair trade prices (or higher) that benefit the people of those communities by putting the extra money into improved water systems and schools.
At the moment, Exploradora offers six coffees: Guatemala (bold roast), Mexico (light roast), Honduras (medium roast), Rwanda (medium roast), Around the World Blend (medium roast) and Blue Foot (decaf). Some of them are organic, some are fair trade, some are both. I’ve tried both the Honduras (described as “sweet cream and molasses with fruit and floral notes”) and the Guatemala (described as “notes of citrus, lemongrass and orange blossom, and just a hint of chocolate”). They’re both first-rate. Over time, the women will likely expand their product line.
You can buy their coffees online (exploradoracoffee.com) or at the Roastery of Cave Creek, La Grande Orange (Arcadia) and Sweet Dee’s Bakeshop (Scottsdale) And know this: Exploradora donates $1 of every woman-produced coffee bag sold to Springboard to Opportunities, a nonprofit aimed at helping low-income African American mothers here in the States. How about that? Wake-up juice that’s woke.
