Red Truck Bakery in Virginia has been serving its Bulldog Edition coffee blend all week to pay tribute to Ben Bradlee. The legendary Washington Post executive editor would have been 96 on Saturday, August 26. The name of the blend has extra significance for newspaper nerds: As Red Truck honcho Brian Noyes explains in a release, it’s “the beloved yet disappearing name of the earliest morning edition of a newspaper.”
Red Rooster Coffee Roaster in southwest Virginia created the blend, in which a Washingtonian tester detected chocolate and cherry notes before a quite bold finish. (It’ll make you clank when you walk, no question.) The bakery said earlier this summer that it shipped “dozens of bags” to the production crew of The Pentagon Papers.
Noyes was an art director at the Post and designed the program for Bradlee’s funeral. Red Truck is pouring and selling bags of the coffee at its shops, and Noyes says it will make a contribution to the Committee to Protect Journalists each time it orders a new batch. Sally Quinn, who was married to Bradlee, tells Washingtonian she’s into the tribute: “Ben was a coffee drinker and I think he would be thrilled by having his name on it as am I,” she says.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
