Arcade Fire Frontman Win Butler Has Launched a Signature Coffee with La Colombe

We love it when some of our favorite things come together—like good music and delicious coffee, for example. So this is some cool news for our Monday morning: Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler, frontman of Arcade Fire, has partnered with Philadelphia-based La Colombe Coffee to develop and launch his own specialty coffee.

RaRa Coffee is a single origin specialty coffee blend featuring heirloom and Arabica beans grown at 1,200 to 1,600 meters in Haiti’s Baptiste region. With cupping notes suggesting chocolate, black pepper, and cedar, the coffee is billed by La Colombe as floral and smooth.

This isn’t La Colombe Coffee’s first celebrity collaboration—its Lyon blend was formed from a partnership with Leonardo DiCaprio, with 100 percent of its net proceeds benefitting environmental and humanitarian causes championed by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. Rara has charity at its heart as well: as RaRa coffee beans come exclusively from Haiti, proceeds from their sale will return to Haiti by benefitting initiatives through Partners in Health, a global charity devoted to providing health care in the world’s poorest and most in need communities, as well as agricultural charity Haiti Coffee Academy.

It’s an especially personal cause for Butler, as his wife and Arcade Fire bandmate Regine Chassagne is of Haitian descent. On La Colombe’s introduction to the new coffee, Butler offered his thoughts on the process:

Being in the mountains of Haiti, it is hard not to think about coffee. The elevation, the sunshine, the soil, and incredible people, who have been growing the plant on tiny family plots for centuries. Haiti is buzzing with potential and possibility, and coffee can be an important part of its rebirth!

I'd heard about what La Colombe was doing with their coffee academy so I approached them to see if they'd make this coffee for me, because coffee is so important to Haiti, and Haiti is so important to me and everyone in the band.

Really happy to share this with you, especially with all the funds going to Partners in Health, The Coffee Academy and Haiti.

Enjoy,

Win Butler.

[SOURCE: Stereogum]