The times they are a changin’…… the Australian Barista Championship has reached the half way mark, where last weekend in Perth, Western Australia the regional championship was held to find a representative from the west who will join 8 others at the ABC in Melbourne on May 3-4th.
I thought I’d post about it now because for the first time that I am aware of (in this part of the world anyway,) the 1st, 2nd & 3rd place winning baristas were all women.
From a field of 18 baristas, most of which were of the masculine variety, Jennifer Murray of Five Senses Coffee/WA Barista Academy was crowned as the WABC, follwed by Vanessa Moore of Epic Espresso in second place and Mimma Battista of Gloria Jeans in third.
This year AASCA has trained up a whole lot of new judges - by running a full training including the sensory skills analysis, theory and practical assessments.
Don’t our judges look attentive…
We also have ultra groovy new trophy’s
And a fantastic photographer in David Bicknell - father of the WABC coordinator and AASCA vice chairman Ben Bicknell (who himself did an awesome job organising the whole competition in Perth).
Ben Bicknell
For more awesome action pictures of all sorts of interesting coffee things (except perhaps Starbucks), you can check out David’s FLICKR site. (All the photo’s in this post are courtesy of David Bicknell)
Thanks for posting about this, Em! It’s so awesome to see an all female top three — cheers to them! Also, it’s interesting that you post about this right now as we just finished the April/May issue of Barista Magazine — not only is it our 3rd anniversary issue, but the main feature is called “10 Incredible Women in Coffee.” Hope everyone enjoys reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together.
Great time to be a woman in coffee, isn’t it?
Yay! Thank you so much, very exciting to see this post. The five senses crew read your magazine religiously and we’ve only just worked out that we need to order at least 10 subscriptions to ensure we actually get our hands on one. Just a little mention from our favorite mag on the other side of the world is awesome. Looking forward to the next issue.