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Gladwyne’s Todd Carmichael is on his way to find a good cup of coffee.
His destination: Cambodia.
He has already traveled to Ethiopia, Madagascar and Malaysia for java, and Haiti, too, where he encountered a group of thugs. In Bolivia he traversed the “world’s deadliest road” to get his cup of Joe.
Carmichael will apparently go to extremes to find the best coffee bean on the planet. And that’s the premise for his new show on the Travel Channel called “Dangerous Grounds,” which premieres Nov. 5, at 10 p.m.
Carmichael, a tattooed, buff 49-year-old entrepreneur (he is CEO and co-founder of the La Colombe Torrefaction coffee brand and cafés), humanitarian (a major fundraiser for Orangutan Foundation International and the Clinton Global Initiative) and adventurer (he holds the world record for the fastest unsupported trek across Antarctica to the South Pole), did not come up with the idea for the show himself. It was his wife, singer Lauren Hart. He had documented his 700-mile solo trek to the South Pole in 2008 for a film, “Race to the Bottom of the Earth,” that aired on the National Geographic Channel, so his wife thought a series based on his untiring search for the best strains of coffee, a commodity savored by nearly a billion people worldwide each day, should be produced as well.
“She said, ‘You should do the same with coffee, honey,’” he recalls during a recent interview.
The result is eight one-hour episodes focusing on a different region of the world produced by Main Line-based Nancy Glass Productions. The show is much like a travelogue, in that he talks about the culture of the country he is visiting.
“I try to share everything I can about the country,” he comments.
Carmichael does not want to compare himself to the television-friendly hosts of other Travel Channel shows such as Anthony Bourdain, whose popular “No Reservations” airs in the 9 p.m. slot before his new show, or the bug- and brain-munching Andrew Zimmern of “Bizarre Foods.”
“I’m just a coffee guy,” he humbly remarks.
Carmichael admits that he does not meticulously plan his travel routes. The coffee entrepreneur’s show is a jolt of unscripted reality, a stranger in a strange land constantly on the move, with peril lurking around each bend in the dirt road, to reach the ultimate reward – that magic bean high on a hill.
He mentions that for some excursions, such as to Brazil or Costa Rica, he took his family members, but for the more rugged, potentially dangerous trips, it was just him and his cameraman.
Many of the locales he visits for the show, originally titled “Coffee Hunter,” are in remote mountainous areas; he points out that the best coffee beans are grown in dry, high altitudes. “The higher it is, the better it is,” he explains. He reached Bolivia, for instance, by flying in at 1,300 feet.
Among the most dangerous countries so far has been Haiti. In fact he remembers that “literally the first 15 minutes of shooting the first episode,” while in a market in Port-au-Prince, a group of about 15 men tried to steal his cash and his camera guy’s equipment. They got away by seeking refuge at a nearby police station. He blames the hostilities on the earthquake-ravaged nation’s dire economic situation.
It didn’t get much easier for Carmichael on his journey to the Haitian mountains as he had to navigate treacherous roads and avoid armed middlemen.
The most welcoming country so far has been Ethiopia, he says, a country of 88 tribes. No stranger to this African land, he remarks that it takes a lifetime to understand its diverse culture.
He particularly relishes interacting with the coffee farmers and other locals. His business practice in general is partnering directly with the farmer, providing the agrarian with a fair-market price and avoiding the middleman.
Despite his close calls with “machine-gun-toting adversaries” and zip-lining high over jungles, Carmichael has not been injured during production or fallen ill during traveling. “I’m just immune to everything,” he says his wife tells him. He does say he lost quite a bit of weight while traveling 12 days through the jungles of Borneo.
His search for the rarest coffee beans included an excursion to Malaysia. There he came upon a tall tree-like shrub bearing a large Liberica bean. Only about 2 percent of all coffee is brewed from the Liberica species of coffee bean (Arabica and Robusta being the more common species worldwide).
“It was 25 feet above my head and not really harvestable,” he recalls about the experience.
He did manage to take a bundle of the beans home and sampled the coffee with some of his Philly gourmets like restaurateur Marc Vetri. He says they all enjoyed the bean’s flavor profile, which is similar to sour green apple. He admits its peculiar taste may be reserved for coffee geeks rather than for the mass market, but nevertheless “I think there may be room for it.”
Music for “Dangerous Grounds” is being composed by his wife, who sings the national anthem at Flyers home games and earlier this year had the honor of performing before a sold-out crowd at the nationally televised Winter Classic hockey match at Citizens Bank Park.
Carmichael explains during his phone interview from Manhattan, where he plans to embark to Cambodia, that it is the monsoon season in the tropical Asian nation, and mudslides may seriously hamper his access to the coffee fields.
But he is undaunted and assures he will proceed with his travel plans.
Carmichael, who makes the Dos Equis beer pitchman – “the Most Interesting Man in the World” – seem like a couch potato, looks forward to exploring the bean-growing regions of many other exotic countries for the show.
There are many perks to his caffeine-induced swashbuckling lifestyle: he travels the ends of the earth, breaks world records and meets extraordinary people, such as Leonardo DiCaprio, with whom he recently co-developed a coffee blend with all profits to benefit the actor’s foundation to fund wildlife protection and climate-change research, among other environmental causes. And now, perhaps the whipped cream on his latte, he is globe-hopping Indiana Jones-style before a national audience.
“It‘s kind of a dream job with frosting,” he explains.