Each week, a Intelligentsia’s Green Coffee Buyer – Geoff Watts- sends out his Nod. It is a very smart person’s version of the Everyday Joe’s Communique. More often than not, those Nods are relayed to you here, on Appendix E-J. This relaying is about a month and a couple weeks behind.
However, the latest Nod contained this note:
“Greetings:
Geoff Watts (Intelligentsia’s intrepid Coffee Buyer) is currently working on our Direct Trade offering from Peru, Cruz del Sur, and has limited connectivity. You know what that means, right? A big update next week.”
What does that mean for you? Well, not sure. But, it does mean that it gives me a week to catch up via a Nod Digest. Here we go…
Bikes & Africa (8/25)- Mr. Watts is in Rwanda. He is riding bikes donated by Schwinn via Bikes To Rwanda to the farmers. These bikes help ensure that the coffee cherries get to the washing stations before they begin to lose important characteristics and other things dealing with their deliciousness.
“They call Rwanda the “Land of 1,000 Hills” due to its rolling landscape, and we biked across at least six or seven of them on our way to the Kabuye washing station, which is one of three belonging to the Maraba cooperative. The ride was tougher than expected. Going up and down those hills was challenging even for the fittest among us. The incline is steep and the roads full of loose dirt, making traction a bit of an issue. On the downward bits I came close to disaster several times while trying to navigate the ruts and rocky patches at a relatively high velocity. My brakes were not that good and braking on loose ground isn’t a simple thing to accomplish. Fortunately there were only two minor casualties among the twenty or so riders, and both of them ought to recover just fine. (I wish that I’d had a camera ready…one of the wipe-outs was most definitely YouTube worthy!).
Our first stop was at a small farm with roughly 200 trees. That’s the way farms are measured here, in tree count rather than in hectares. Really they are more like coffee gardens, super tiny compared to even the smallest farms in Latin America. The farmer we met was in his late fifties, with 10 kids (and one more on the way!). This was one of three small plots he had. In total he will likely earn about $1,000 this harvest season from his coffee, a relatively large income when compared to the national average, which is somewhere around $350 annually. But he is worried about the future as the land resources become pretty miniscule when divided 10 ways. This is a common problem facing African farmers. As the populations continue to explode, resources become increasingly scarce. As it is, this entire country is already cultivated. There really is no room whatsoever to expand and every inch is accounted for. And the soils are getting worse as a result of the widespread planting of Eucalyptus trees (a gift of the Belgians) that make for good firewood and building materials because of their quick growth but have a very negative impact over time as they suck the water table dry and worsen the acidity of the soils.”
The Nod then took a couple weeks off for a wedding. Then came…
The Coffee To End All Coffees (9/19)- In the concert industry, there are awards. Best indoor venue, best outdoor venue, etc. For some large number of years in a row, Colorado’s own Red Rocks Amphitheater won the best outdoor prize. So many times, in fact, that it is now known as the Red Rocks award and Red Rocks is removed from the running.
There is a coffee like this…
“and it goes by the name of Esmeralda Geisha. It is indisputably the most revered coffee the world has seen in decades. Among coffee professionals and tasters it has gained a reputation as being in a category by itself, so profoundly flavorful and unique that it cannot be fairly compared with other coffees. Among connoisseurs it has achieved an almost transcendental status, capable of inspiring sensorial awe.”
So why is this so fantastic? It seems to be because of the long journey it has traveled from coffee’s roots in Ethiopia. This particular tree was taken to Kenya in 1931, then Tanzania in 1936, then Costa Rica in 1953, then Panama in the 1960s…
“But it was soon forgotten, as it was much lower-yielding than other available varieties and farmers did not see any advantage to planting Geisha when they could get much better production out of Caturra or other hybrids.
No one talked about or thought about Geisha until 2004, when Daniel Peterson of Hacienda La Esmeralda decided to investigate these odd-looking, tall and spindly trees that were growing on his family’s farm. He harvested and processed them separately from everything else, and then on a whim (and with much reservation) entered them into the 2004 Best of Panama competition. To his astonishment, it captivated the jury to such a degree that many were awarding perfect 100-point scores in the competition, an extreme rarity among the cupping crowd. Many thought it was a trick, that someone had slipped an Ethiopian coffee on the table as a surprise. The coffee was so floral, so seductively sweet and aromatic, so honey-drenched and alive with tropical fruit notes that we all had a hard time believing it was really a Panamanian coffee—it defied everything we had come to expect.”
Wild…and now it sells for $130 per pound- UNROASTED.
That was interesting, and Watts could probably use a bit of that Esmeralda before spending a lot of time on airplanes back in the United States…
Here and There and Chemistry (10/3)- Great coffee deserves to be enjoyed as fresh as possible. We believe this. Several shops are beginning to brew one cup at a time via various methods – Chemex, Clover, French Press. You order a cup of the brew you want and it is delicious.
“You see, brewed coffee changes continuously as it sits, with or without applied heat. All coffees contain some amount of chlorogenic acid, a mildly bitter acid which slowly breaks down into quinic acid (the same thing found in tonic water), imparting a sourish taste to the coffee. Like most reactions, this happens faster or slower depending on the temperature. But one thing is certain—after 30 minutes or so the coffee will have changed, irreversibly, and lost just a little of its perceived sweetness and vitality.”
At Method in Atlanta, Mr. Watts enjoyed a Kenya before hopping on the plane to L.A. (which he loves and is the site of Intelligentsia’s new roastery). After a couple days there, it was across the country to the NYC.
“On Wednesday night we held the grand opening of our new training space in Soho, a cool little joint right on Broadway. I was amazed to see so many people come out, and there were a hundred or more people in attendance. Very good stuff. I’m excited to see what happens with the NY coffee scene over the next several years. It has been stuck in time when it comes to coffee, lagging far behind the impressive movements that have developed in the Pacific Northwest and spread slowly Eastwards. Perhaps it’s a sort of stubbornness and obsession with tradition that has held the Big Apple back all these years. Maybe it’s the incredible costs of doing business. Either way, true Specialty Coffee has finally arrived, and I get the sense that New Yorkers are really going to embrace it. At least I hope so—the country’s biggest and most famous city really ought to be drinking the best coffees this planet can produce, it just makes sense.”
Then it was back to Chicago before heading off to Peru, where we’ll hear from Mr. Geoff Watts next.
Further:
Popularity: 26% [?]
The age of the urn and the airpot is coming to a close. I believe that brewing in large batches is antithetical to the very idea of specialty coffee. Once brewed, coffee begins to lose aromatic and flavor qualities almost immediately, and after even 15-20 minutes, it has changed so much as to have lost many of the very things that made it special in the first place. This method of preparation means that the retailer loses out because they are dumping a lot of coffee down the drain after it gets too old to sell (at least I hope that they are doing this!). The consumer loses out because she is deprived of choice. What if I want a cup of Kenya, my sister prefers a tasty coffee from HueHuetenango, and my girlfriend wants to drink some Colombian coffee from Santuario? People have different preferences and they ought to be able to choose their favorite coffee each time they walk into a shop rather than settle for whatever happens to be on tap at the time. The coffee loses out because it doesn’t really get a chance to show what it can do.
There is always harvesting happening somewhere in the world, and we are aiming to showcase coffees from each country we work in during the months in which they are in their prime. Doesn’t that just make sense?
