STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
When the Warm Springs Lodge reopens on Saturday it will boast the first specialty espresso service on the mountain.
The Warm Springs Konditorei will feature specialty espressos and cappuccinos from Lizzy’s Fresh Coffee.
Liz Roquet, who founded Lizzy’s Fresh Coffee in 2008, just happens to be the daughter of Fred Pendl, an Austrian who ran the Austrian-flavored Konditorei in its early days.
Two of the baristas from the Konditorei in Sun Valley Village will move to Warm Springs, serving up the Boulder and Sawtooth blends and other favs.
“The Konditorei in the village has been a great partner with us,” said Roquet, who is seeing her coffee business expand just a month after Hailey Coffee Company—another valley favorite—opened a new store on Sun Valley Road in Ketchum. “They’ve done a great job of being dedicated to making a nice product. The coffee business there has grown exponentially.”
Lizzy’s Fresh Coffee, which recently moved down the street from its old site to a storefront on Highway 75 across from the Knob Hill Inn, was recently awarded four silver and bronze medals in the 2018 Golden Bean North America Coffee Roasting Competition--the world’s largest coffee roaster competition.
“We won one the first year, then two the next. To win four is such a surprise,” she said, of the competition which featured coffees from top roasters in the United States and Canada.
Lizzy’s Fresh Coffee received a silver medal for its Guatemala Huehuetenango in the Organic Espresso Category. Roquet won the Silver Medal for her Ethiopia Layo Taraga in the Single Origin Espresso Category. She won a Bronze Medal for her Costa Rica La Trinidad in the Pour Over Filter Category. And she won a Bronze Medal for the Posy Blend in the Espresso Category.
Roquet says her success begins with farmers around the globe that cultivate “beautiful coffees.”
Ana Alvarado Domingo, for instance, grows the Guatemala Huehuetenango, which boasts notes of toffee, lemon and strawberry. The sweet Costa Rica La Trinidad has hints of grapefruit, lemon and melon. The Ethiopia Layo Taraga offers apricot, persimmon and caramel flavors.
Roquet experiments with her coffee beans, trying various amounts of heat and forced air before she springs a blend on her consumers.
“My job as a roaster is to deliver on their promise,” she added. “I mean, I could roast it and wreck it.
While the Warm Springs Lodge reopens for the public on Saturday, the actual ribbon cutting will be held next week at 11 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 22. And guests will be invited to toast the lodge’s resurrection with its famous chocolate chip cookies.
The lodge suffered major damage in a fire just a few days after the close of the 2017-18 ski season. Fire investigators later determined that it originated in plastic garbage cans outside the lodge. The fire escalated as sprinklers failed to work.
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