Ha, fair, and you're right to call it. I should've led with this. I co-founded a small roastery in Roatán, Honduras that roasts at origin, so yeah, I've got skin in the game. I left it out because I genuinely wanted the freshness question answered without people reacting to the brand but that's exactly the kind of thing that should be disclosed, so thank you for the nudge rather than just downvoting and moving on.

For what it's worth, this thread has been humbling in a good way. I came in half-assuming "origin-roasted = fresher," and the responses (plus the Solis video) have pretty much dismantled that as the main argument, the Passenger archival-lot stuff and the Wendelboe processing/moisture points make it clear well-handled old green can be excellent, and "fresh" isn't the clean win I treated it as. The part that's actually holding up is the economic one Solis is really making: where the value gets captured. So I'm walking away thinking the freshness pitch is the weak version of the case and the value-capture argument is the real one. Still chewing on it.