Appendix E-J

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:

• Bikes To Rwanda
  
• Article about Esmeralda

Popularity: 26% [?]

Each week we receive The Nod…kind of a coffee digest from Intelligentsia’s Green Coffee Buyer, Geoff Watts. It is always interesting, but some weeks it is simply too long. The man has a lot floating around in his head about coffee and its industry. Enjoy this week’s Nod and then enjoy some of Intelligentsia’s beans in brewed form the next time you come to Everyday Joe’s.

Hola:

Sitting in the airport here at O’Hare, wondering why it is that the International Terminal is so under-serviced. It’s unusual as most prime-time international airports go the extra mile to stuff their international terminals full of shops and restaurants and decorations and various amenities designed to impress visitors (and suck cash out of their pockets). O’Hare is, of course, huge, and most terminals there have a decent assortment of places to eat or sit or shop for things you don’t really need. But Terminal 5 is a no-frills stripped down traveler processing unit. And not even a very efficient one. What’s up with that?

I’m here awaiting my flight to London, which will be followed by a flight to Kenya. Tomorrow morning I’ll make the last leg over to Rwanda, where the first-ever Cup of Excellence competition is getting ready to enter the final round. There are several things that are amazing about this:

- Eight years ago there really wasn’t any top quality coffee being produced in Rwanda.

- There are at least three African nations (Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia) that have been involved with Specialty Coffee for many decades and should have been better positioned put on a CoE event.

- Most of the jurors attending the competition have never before purchased Rwandan coffee, and it will be the first time that many of them taste this coffee!

Suffice to say, it is going to be a big coming-out party for this tiny country that is re-shaping itself at an astounding pace after completely falling apart just 15 years ago.

Next week I’ll be reporting on the cuppings and goings-on. I’m especially excited about this since I’ve been so close to the development there over the last five years. It really does feel like a school graduation of sorts, though it is important to remember that everything there is still very fragile and there is still a long way to go before their coffee industry can become strong, self-sufficient, and sustainable. The local industry still doesn’t really know itself. Grower groups there have been guided along a path, but they have much to learn about long-term self-management and are still developing the orienteering skills that will allow them to navigate in a quickly changing coffee world. So I guess that makes it a high-school graduation…

But they have a lot of things going for them. There are a lot of young people that are driving the quality process, and with any luck, they should form a solid base of leadership in the future. They’ve got a natural advantage over Latin American producing countries in the form of abundant labor. There are many people living in a tiny place, and the Rwandans can apply a massive amount of human effort to meticulous process control on the farms, at the washing stations and in the dry mills. At a time when other producing countries are battling real labor shortages, Rwanda is flush. And, at least for now, they’ve got a government that seems to function well and does not create the kinds of obstacles (outdated and archaic coffee industry bureaucracy, endemic corruption) that some of their neighbors deal with.

This jury will be star-studded. Does that sound funny? I think it does, but that’s one of those great things about the coffee world. There are some incredibly dynamic and visionary persons who populate it, people who are very capable of creating wonderful things, who in another life would likely be rock stars or painters or field-leading researchers… or flailing lunatics. (Sometimes it’s a fine line.)

Most of the cuppers are friends I’ve known for many years, folks I’ve spent weeks at a time with in various countries evaluating and discussing the merits of contending coffees, brainstorming ideas for improvement, imagining what this will all look like ten years from now. The Cup of Excellence circuit has made this possible. With nine participating countries (Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Rwanda) there is ample opportunity each year to meet up for the intense four-day cupping that forces us all to dig about as deep into a cup as one can go. Complete dissection. I liken it to taking an MRI on the bean and then sitting around for an hour contemplating and interpreting the images. These cuppers will come from Scandinavia, Japan, Central America, Europe, the US, Australia and Taiwan for the opportunity to taste and discuss these coffee specimens. I’ve been traveling the “circuit” for about the last six years and have made some great friends with other roasters and coffee buyers over time. Most of them will be there in Rwanda. It is without doubt the most talented coffee jury I’ve ever seen. Should be pretty amazing.

Next time you hear from me I’ll be midway through the competition, and there will be a big smile on my face. For a smile on your own face, drink some Itzamna, our Direct Trade Offering from Guatemala.

As always, find our Nods at:
http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/origin/offerings.

Onwards,

Geoff Watts
Green Coffee Buyer
Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea

Popularity: 16% [?]

The Nod.

It is the newsletter sent out each week by Mr. Geoff Watts. Mr. Watts is the VP of Coffee for Intelligentsia. Intelligentsia is a mighty fine coffee roaster. We serve the beans they roast. Their passion, however, extends far beyond coffee. That passion is palatable in this week’s letter from Mr. Watts. Parts of it remind me of when Everyday Joe’s first opened 5 years ago, and Suzanne worked without pay just so it could get going because she believed in what could happen. Enjoy.

Hola:

To recap last week’s message, I spent a lot of time talking about, well, time. Having just returned from a trip to Africa, I also discussed our work in Rwanda and the challenges for cooperatives there: a lack of strong leadership, interference from both the government and private companies, and even electrical power outages. This week, I feel good talking about some of the positive things happening in Rwanda.

This year at Nyakizu the dozens of workers at the cooperative washing station have not yet been paid. Farmers delivering cherry are forsaking immediate cash to support the efforts of their group, tendering the coffee without any payment whatsoever. It is a staggering display of commitment and loyalty. They have new leadership in place, starting with President Emmanuel Hibamukiza, a relatively young and very charismatic guy who also works as a schoolteacher in the local village. One of the farmers, an old gentleman named Narzon Muharinkya, has been there since the beginning and recounted the leadership problems they’d experienced in the past. For the first time since Nyakizu was founded, he feels good about the group and has a renewed optimism that they will be able to move forward from here. I cannot begin to explain how his sentiments touched me as we sat together in a grove of trees just beside the station, talking about how to fix the problems and what must be done to build stability within the group and ensure that the cooperative can grow and thrive as it moves forward.

Still nothing is certain. I wrote a letter of intent last month to help the group secure pre-financing through Root Capital, a micro-finance organization. RWASHOSSCO, led by the very capable and sympathetic Gilbert Gatali, took out a loan in order to bail out the coop this year and prevent the bank from taking the washing station. This season is critical. If anything goes wrong, it will mean the end of the cooperative. But I feel good about what lies ahead. They’ve pushed through incredibly difficult times and have grown smarter for it. The stage to succeed is set in a way it has never been in the past, and we are going to do everything in our power to make this thing work. The coffee here is incredible, and it was easily the best of the Rwandan coffees we purchased last season and the real potential has not yet been touched.

From Nyakizu we drove to Kibuye, a small town on the edge of Lake Kivu in the western part of the country. Kivu is a gorgeous lake separating Rwanda from the Congo, filled with delicious little fish called Sambaza. They are just about the only fish in there as the lake is full of natural methane that rises up from the bottom and makes it nearly uninhabitable.

After a night’s sleep we took off for Nyabumera, one of the washing stations we are buying from in the region. Previously there had been four mini-stations under one umbrella of management, collectively known as Rusenyi, but large geographic distance separates the stations (nearly an hour and a half drive over bumpy roads to get from one to another) and the coop leadership proved unable to keep things together. A bad accountant was removed from office last year and a decision was made to split the coop into two groups based on geography. Nyabumera and Ruvumbu now fall under one roof, independent of the others, and just as with Nyakizu they’ve got a new set of leaders and a new lease on life. The same issues apply here—motivating membership to deliver cherry despite the immediate appeal of the competing stations that are luring away farmers who have lost faith in the cooperative and are pursuing short-term fixes rather than trying to build strength through solidarity with the group.

Rusenyi is an enchanting place. It is one of the lushest regions in Rwanda, with softly rolling hills and gorgeous views of the lake. It also stands out as one of the only areas in the country that mounted a strong resistance to the interahamwe militias that catalyzed the genocide in 1994. They are a strong and impressively fearless people.

When we got there, I went immediately to the drying tables to have a look at the parchment. I was surprised as I reached out to grab a handful—one of the women sorting defects out stopped me, and told me I could not touch the coffee until I washed my hands. Never in 7 years of prolific origin work in well over a dozen countries have I ever experienced this! It was an inspiring moment. Touching the parchment with unwashed hands really shouldn’t make any difference (provided the hands in question were not covered in oil or paint or something), but they were taking no chances! They were protecting the quality with astounding vigilance. I went and washed my hands and then headed back to check out the coffee and talk with the women working on the parchment.

We met with the group for a couple of hours, discussing both the past and the future and strategizing on ways to push this thing forward. More communication, more pre-financing, more outreach in the fields, and more technical assistance form the backbone of the prescription. They thanked us for solar flashlights that they’d received last season and asked quietly whether or not they might be able to get more since the farmers really loved them and there were many who hadn’t gotten one. There will be more flashlights coming, we will see to that, one way or another.

When we finished our meeting we headed down to Kibuye again to stop in at the cupping lab and taste some coffees with Emerthe and Rose, two of the young cuppers who I had helped train years ago. It was great to see them again. They still have a lot of work to do to continue developing their skills, but it will come with time. After we cupped, I took a quick ride on one of the Yamaha bikes sitting around and was having a grand old time until I rounded a corner with a little too much speed and went crashing to the ground. Ayyy! I couldn’t restart the bike and ended up walking it back to the lab, feeling more than a little embarrassed.

From there it was a three-hour drive back to Kigali and an early end to the day, due mostly to the fatigue from lots of driving and lots of talking. After a somewhat refreshing sleep, we moved on to Humure, another coop we’ve worked with for the last couple years. It’s way up in the North, approaching Tanzania. Along the way you pass a lake where Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda and a captivating figure who I am still dying to meet, has a home. It takes just under three hours to get there, and when we arrived, we were greeted by the whole crew: Claude Sebamana (the new President), Veniranda Mukankusi (VP), Eustache Inite (Secretary), Principe (GM), Eugenie Mana (Acctounting), Jean de Dieu (Maintenance.), Gasana Gideon (Production Officer), John Bavumire (Security), along with Emmanuel Getera (Technician) and about 20 other farmers. Things looked much, much, much better than the last time I’d been there. Clearly they’d taken the advice from last year to heart, and across the board the systems for controlling quality were improved.

Humure started as a group in 1999, but back then it was a different ballgame altogether. I’m amazed they’ve stayed together, given the abysmal value that Rwandan coffee had in those days. Now they’ve got 372 members. They are still paying off their 2004 BRD loans that were taken out to pay for the washing station construction. But they are advancing. Of the three coops we visited, Humure is the strongest and best organized and accordingly are the furthest along in getting square with the bank. They’re also trying to diversify; many of the women have been weaving baskets and asked us if there was a way we could sell them in the States. I’m going to get that worked out…the baskets are gorgeous, very well-made, each one requiring about 30 hours to complete. I have lots of them at home, some that I’ve bought and many that were given to me as gifts over the last five years. You should have one too!

After a long and very productive meeting with the group in which we discussed plans for the current season and ideas about how to keep this thing moving forward, we drove back to Kigali once again. I have some friends there who run a media company, and they’ve just recently opened a cool bar attached to a cool Italian restaurant called Papyrus. I went up there with Peter Giuliano and Clara, a girl from Portland who directs a program called Bikes to Rwanda. The food was delicious, especially the cheese that comes from a nearby farm. The wine was cheap and gave me a headache, but at least it tasted OK. Still, I’ll give the place thress stars. One of the best food options in Rwanda, where one cannot be especially picky.

Right now I’m in Heathrow airport, sitting, and waiting. I’ll be happy to get back to Chicago tomorrow morning, or this morning, or however you want to reckon it. But the stay at home will be a short one…I leave the following morning for Colombia.

This week we are proud to announce the release of one of our newest Direct Trade Offerings: El Machete, Panama. Since this is a new coffee for us, I am happy that it is coming out now before all our old favorites from Central America are back in season. El Machete gets a couple weeks in the spotlight, and it will really shine. Sarah Kluth, our Chicago-based Director of Quality Control, says that you can expect “a mouth-watering syrupy body full of blackberry, caramel, fudge, and hints of citrus.” Sounds good to me!

As always, find our Nods at:

http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/origin/offerings.

Onward,

Geoff Watts
VP of Coffee
Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea

Popularity: 22% [?]