Coffee grown in the highlands?
To the team at ICR - apologies the acronym makes you sound like a 90s football rioting firm but I am a super busy reviewer and don’t have time to be writing out Inverness Coffee Roasting Company in full… damn it, ended up writing it anyway, ho hum…
I begrudgingly bestow five stars upon your Milkbar Roast coffee beans. I had a cup at your coffee shop in Inverness, took a pack home, and it is sublime. I would love just be writing solely about the delightful peace of mind that comes with the twistingly complex olfactory undercurrents, and the pleasant service at your coffee shop, but unfortunately there's more to the story.
My fiancé (we're getting married next year, and I am so happy not say 'partner' anymore, mainly because I am not a character in a Western, or do you say 'girlfriend' when you’re 43? I digress) just came into the room with a look of astonishment claiming: these coffee beans were 'grown in the highlands'.
A bit of context, English is not her first language, a bit more context I am on like my third cup of this delicious coffee, so I am now presenting a bit like a member of a 90s football rioting firm: a bit naughty, a bit slicy, hopped up on stimulants, ready to get stuck in. She shows me your strap line GROWN IN THE HIGH LANDS, ROASTED IN THE HIGHLANDS.
Now, she's basically planning our honeymoon in this mystical valley where the highland coffee beans grow and the haggis roam free. I have to point out that ICR comms team have separated the word High Lands (my capitalisation as you've written in all caps - bit shouty- also makes it difficult to differentiate a proper noun, which I understand it not to be in this case) as a play on words.
So, effectively you've just smashed someone's dreams, plus now our honeymoon will have to be to Narnia or somewhere to beat the imaginary version. Were those dreams wrong? Yes. Were those dreams induced by OD-levels of coffee, sure they were. But the real question no-one has asked until now, why was I put in this position and how are you going to compensate?
The way I see it is you have two choices: first, actually terraform a micro-ecosystem in the highlands that supports coffee cultivation. Or behind door number 2 (yea, there are doors now), check your wordplay… before you wreck your… Saturday? I don’t know, something better than that - do an AI. That combined with introducing the 'doors' halfway through, I am rapidly loosing credibility from when I was talking about proper nouns earlier, but now I am just reviewing my own review
So, even with this terrible experience, obviously totally ICR's fault, your coffee still gets five stars! You bunch of dream-smashing, honeymoon ruining, coffee roasting ninjas.
21 June 2025
Unprompted review