MOKKA’s story begins in 1923, when Chris Samourkas opened the family’s first coffee shop at the address by the Central Market where MOKKA still roasts, serving coffee freshly roasted and freshly ground. From the 1950s Dimitrios Apostolidis and Theodore Samourkas opened a chain of coffee shops, each with its own roaster, and the family coffee became BRAVO, which held more than 60% of the Greek coffee market when it was sold to Sara Lee in 1994. The family also ran the Brazilian café, by MOKKA’s account the first in Greece to serve espresso.

In 1999 Nikos Psomas, grandson of Dimitrios Apostolidis, renovated the neoclassical building and founded MOKKA, named after the family’s coffee of the 1920s. He imported certified specialty coffee from Brazilian plantations, and in 2001 MOKKA bought its first Cup of Excellence lot. It has since bought Cup of Excellence lots from Brazil, Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Rwanda and Burundi. Nikos Psomas is a Cup of Excellence juror and placed fifth at the World Cup Tasters Championship in 2005, and MOKKA’s awards include Stavros Lambrinidis’s World Ibrik Championship title in 2014.

MOKKA buys direct from producers it has worked with for years, among them Monte Alegre in Brazil, the source of its espresso blend and its Greek Special. It imports its lots once a year, two months after harvest, and stores them in a cold, humidity-controlled room; Brazilian coffee arrives every month. Its roast is medium, smooth and deep, meant to develop the beans fully without roasty or burnt notes, and every bag names the producer and the processing.

The 1,000 square metre building holds the traditional coffee shop, the café, the training centre and the roastery. MOKKA is an Authorized SCA Trainer and the official representative of Victoria Arduino.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: MOKKA