English South, April 2024
At that moment I knew I was in love with Nerja," says coffee lover Kerry Patten, 39, who settled in this eastern Costa del Sol town with her husband, Wesley, and their two young children after years of travelling the world and a final sojourn in Spain.
Wesley, 43, and Kerry come from County Mayo in the west of Ireland and went to high school in the village of Achill Sound. At the time, the likeable vegan couple were not a couple, but they met a couple of years later on New Year's Eve 2002. In 2003, Wesley, a Financial Mathematics and Economics graduate, was working in Dublin on construction projects, which later included a stint at the prestigious Powerscourt Hotel in County Wicklow, a favourite of Chris de Burgh's and popular for its acclaimed David McLay Kidd-designed golf course.
Before the birth of their first child, 12-year-old Caleb, the Pattens travelled extensively from their Dublin home. In New Zealand they were engaged on Mount Cook, and also spent time in Australia, Southeast Asia and Fiji, as well as Cancun, Mexico, and many other countries. For a year and a half, the couple, who married on the summer solstice in 2008, lived apart while Kerry went to live in Akron, Ohio, where her American mother was at the time; Wesley stayed, working, in Dublin. Achill, where Wesley is from, is twinned with Cleveland, Ohio, as many Irish expatriates have put down roots there.
Kerry, from Teirnaur, says: "We were at a distance for a year and a half. We were still together. And it was hard at the time. It was like calling cards.
"And internet cafés," Wesley adds from the villa they have rented overlooking Nerja and the sea. The couple say they feel a great affinity with the locals and find them just like the Irish.
Kerry says: "We've been out of Ireland for nine years this September. In 2015, when we had the kids [her daughter Ariya is nine], we went to San Francisco because there were more opportunities and my mother lived there. I got a job as a hairdresser and Wesley was a maths teacher.
"At that time we didn't have much money, so I set up my own business, a hairdresser, and when the money started coming in, Wesley would buy me speciality coffees, as a treat.
Wesley says: "It was more about her. I didn't like coffee at the time.
But Kerry has loved coffee all her life, mainly because of her mother's nationality. "Growing up in the west of Ireland we were always considered the best coffee in town. It was instant. But we were always considered to have the 'fancy instant'," Kerry laughs.
"I would no longer consider it good," he adds.
"And when I lived in Australia I learned to make coffee as a barista. Coffee has always been in my life and when we lived at home I was considered to have the best coffee in town," says Kerry.
Kerry believes we are in the third "wave" of coffee: the first was wartime instant coffee, the second Starbucks and now speciality coffee.
"Even in the last year and a half since we've had our business here, the speciality scene is exploding," says Kerry.
Wesley says that after the closure of Covid, the couple rethought what they wanted out of life and how they wanted to spend more time with their children and, as "we had learned some Spanish, we wanted to move here".
People warned the couple about the lack of work, but they, from the west of Ireland, were no strangers to this situation. They first spent three months backpacking in Spain with their children. The Pattens spent a week on the Camino de Santiago, partly to inspire a great business idea. But it didn't go the way they had hoped.
A month after arriving in Spain, Wesley was a little disappointed in Salamanca.
"And I drank the coffee and thought 'I haven't had a decent coffee since we've been here'.
"That's what I want to do," says Kerry, recalling the Eureka moment that gave birth to Nerja Coffee Roasters, a small-batch artisan coffee roasting business.
You can now find Nerja Coffee Roasters at farmers' markets along the coast. Kerry and Wesley attend the Nerja market, which takes place on the first two Saturdays of every month. And they belong to the Sabor a Málaga brand.
Nerja Coffee Roasters are working to become an accredited supplier of organic speciality coffees. They currently have a wide range of organic and fair trade coffees in the markets, for home delivery, and can be purchased online at www.nerjacoffeeroasters.com.
