Coffee made by combining beans from two or more origins, varieties, or roast curves into a single bag. The opposite of single origin. Done well, blending creates a cup that's larger than its parts — sweetness from one component, body from another, brightness from a third. Done poorly, it's a way to hide low-quality coffee inside a more interesting one.
Why blends exist
Three honest reasons.
Consistency across harvests. A specific Ethiopian lot is gone in six months. A blend can keep tasting like itself year after year by re-balancing components as crops shift, which matters for cafes whose customers expect the same flavour every visit.
Designed flavour profiles. A blend can be a recipe — chocolate-and-caramel for milk drinks, citrus-and-stone-fruit for filter, full-bodied-and-sweet for espresso — that no single farm produces. The roaster composes the flavour the way a perfumer composes notes.
Cost optimization. A small percentage of a high-grade lot can lift a larger volume of cheaper coffee. Most supermarket "blend" really means this. Specialty blends do something more interesting; commodity blends do this only.
How to read a blend bag
Specialty blends list their components: "60% Ethiopia Yirgacheffe washed, 40% Brazil Cerrado natural" tells you exactly what's in the cup. Generic blends just say "Premium roast — South American coffees" and tell you nothing. The first is transparent and trustworthy; the second is the convention you're agreeing to when you buy supermarket coffee.
For filter brewing, single origins are usually the more interesting choice. For espresso served with milk, well-designed blends often beat single origins by miles.