A Collaboration with Cavern New York

“You could be two blocks away from the old Williamsburg cafe and smell coffee roasting. The smell of any natural processed coffee, the fruity aroma it gives as it’s brewed—it stood out to me even before I really understood the coffee or why it smelled that way.

This is what I think of when I think about my move to New York ten years ago. It felt like home in a new place.”

–Derek Heydle, founder of Cavern New York

Cavern New york

Sometimes a smell creeps up on us and lets in a memory we never expected. For Derek Heydle, it’s the smell of coffee roasting that takes him back almost a decade to his first years in New York City, when he found his way into the heart of Blue Bottle Coffee as a barista in our Bryant Park cafe. While he brewed coffee in the mornings, he fine-tuned his candlemaking craft in the evenings.

He was drawn to the world of smells because of what it lacked. At the time, fragrances felt pigeonholed by ideas of the masculine and feminine. He wanted to create scents that were well-rounded, complex, and dynamic. Something that refused to fit in these boxes, and represented a whole idea, not one facet of it. He turned to nature as his teacher, exploring scents and finding balance in the earthy aroma of dirt that cradles the bright delicacy of the budding flower. He eventually left Blue Bottle Coffee to start a fragrance studio of his own—Cavern New York.

This holistic view drew us to him when we began searching for a partner to collaborate with on this project. We saw in his candles the ideal we aspire to with our coffees: allowing the full life of these coffees and scents to shine through, unhindered by our touch.

The Origin Candle

When we turned to Cavern New York to help us create a scent to tell the Blue Bottle story and live within the homes of our guests, it wasn’t the memories tied to the smell of brewed coffee or roasteries that he focused on. It was the smell of the coffee origins, the start of a journey, much like his own with Cavern. He thought back to his origins as a barista-by-day, candle-maker-by-night and knew the importance of beginnings, the expansiveness they create, and the power of harnessing them.

We worked together to create a candle that takes you to faraway coffee farms perched on the hillside of the Guatemalan highlands or the mountains of Colombia. As the sun rises over the peaks, you walk through the coffee blossoms and dew-covered leaves. Fresh moss climbs the bark of the trees and a jasmine-like florality fills the air as the blossoms open to the day’s new light.

Our Origin Candle was made to tell the story of our coffee’s origins, but the fresh, balanced smell serves another purpose as well. Derek muses, “Scents can be bookmarks in our lives. When it’s unique and really interesting, the smell can make you think of the time you burned that candle. It can take you back to a different time.”