THE first time I fell for a cafe was 15 years ago in Christchurch, New Zealand. There must have been half a dozen similar places on the same street, all of them pretty good, but this was the one I was drawn to. Contentment would descend within moments of sitting down (clean, clear table, not too squished). There was a copy of the day’s newspaper, service was prompt and coffee was, without fail, spot on.

A couple years down the line, having moved away, I learned it had been destroyed by the 2011 earthquake. I felt so nostalgic for the contented times we spent together.

Back in the UK, I found we were a little behind the times when it came to cafe culture. While the Aussies and Kiwis were dishing out single estate flat whites with latte art, we were still being asked “filter or frothy?”.

But gradually we Brits have been getting a taste for speciality coffee. Genuine enthusiasm for the drink is feeding into a vibrant cafe culture, and in Cumbria we’re embracing both wholeheartedly.

“Cumbria is big on coffee because we’re big on food,” says Bruce Brown of Bruce and Luke’s, the Carlisle coffee roasters that started in 2014. It grew out of Foxes Coffee Lounge on Abbey Street, the relaxed city-centre café that he took over in 2011 with his friend and business partner Luke Jackson.

“A cafe is about the people that are part of it. It responds to the local area,” he says. “People can’t be themselves in a corporate. If you go to a big city, you can go to an independent coffee shop and ask ‘what’s good around here?’”

One answer to that question would be our speciality coffee. Cumbria has eight independent coffee roasters, and they’re not all newcomers: Farrer’s in Kendal and John Watt’s in Carlisle have been roasting for 198 and 152 years respectively.

When Bruce and Luke’s started in 2014, Cumbria was already getting a taste of so-called ‘third wave’ coffee, with its emphasis on the origin of beans and roasting techniques that bring out their particular flavours. Gareth Kemble and Angharad Macdonald had started Carvetii Coffee Roasters in 2011, after spotting a gap in the market for a Cumbrian speciality coffee roaster.

“We predicted the wave of excitement about coffee coming out of the cities,” says Gareth, who first worked as a teacher when he and Angharad came to the Lake District on holiday and realised they couldn’t bear to leave.

He remembers the single cup of coffee - at Treeby & Bolton in Keswick, brewed using Square Mile coffee roasted in London - that set him on the path to becoming a coffee roaster.

“It was so uniquely different from anything else I’d drunk in Cumbria that it really struck a chord with me.”

Many of the up-and-coming speciality roasters that are now his competition tell of similar epiphany-in-a-cup moments.

“We had this coffee that tasted like lemons - until then we just thought coffee tasted like coffee,” says Bruce Brown, who admits that the third-wave trend towards more lightly roasted, fruitier coffees wasn’t to every customer’s taste.

“A lot of people were like: ‘your coffee is sour’ and ‘this is weak’.”

Whether or not we’re ready to swap our Italian-style dark roasts for the fruitier tones of lightly roasted beans, we’re all becoming a lot more discerning.

“People can make decent coffee at home now, so when they go out their expectations are elevated,” Gareth says. “The best coffee shops are raising these expectations even more.”

It’s not just the beans that are getting better. The cafes that steal our hearts are those serving loose-leaf tea, proper hot chocolate and a decent range of grown-up soft drinks. And there’s one other magic ingredient. “If you can’t get good service, you might as well go to a vending machine,” Bruce says.

Stephen Kidd has always known that his ‘perfect’ cafe would be one where customers feel at home. He dreamed up his Cockermouth coffee shop The Moon and Sixpence when he was working at a cafe in Vancouver, Canada.

On his return in 2012, he “blitzed” the Cumbria coffee scene by working at several cafes, including a spell front of house at L’Enclume just for good measure.

“My pet hate is going into a coffee shop and the barista thinking they’re too cool,” says Stephen, who spent a year working at Carvetii to learn all he could about coffee.

“For me, the glass of water on the table when you sit down – that shows you’re going to be looked after. It has to be spot on with finesse, the cup placed in front of the person with the handle facing them. The worst thing is not to care.”

A winter Friday at The Moon and Sixpence sees almost every seat taken, customers enveloped in the warm fug that mists up the windows and pleasantly slows the heart rate.

Several Stephen greets by name. Some are in groups, others quite alone enjoying the excellent company of a newspaper, a really good coffee made especially for them and the feeling that, for now, someone cares.

THIS FEATURE IS TAKEN FROM THE JANUARY/FEBRUARY ISSUE OF TASTE MAGAZINE.

THE MARCH/APRIL ISSUE IS ON SALE ON NOW.