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ADDITIONAL VENDING AND OFFICE COFFEE ARTICLES:
Coffee or Wine... Which Would You Prefer, Sir? © 2006 Stuart Daw A specialty store operator sent us a question he received from one of his retail customers. After answering it, I thought it might be appropriate to repeat it in a somewhat expanded version for this magazine. After all, people in vending and coffee service hear a lot about specialty coffee, and even appear at specialty conventions wondering what the heck is going on in that business. Here is the question exactly as received: “I collect wine and am aware that the same bottle of wine (i.e., Cabernet Sauvignon) from the same winery will taste dramatically different from year to year; some years are much better than others. Is this the same for coffee? Is there a rating service for coffee that says 2001 was a great year for coffee (beans) from Brazil but a lousy year for coffee from Africa?” The answer: There is some resemblance between coffee and wine in that there are a few varieties of the botanical coffee species Arabica, such as Typica, Caturra, Bourbon, and Maragogype, and the entirely different botanical species known as robusta, and even a small amount of the hybrid combination, Arabusta. Though I am not an authority on wine, I suspect the difference between varieties is somewhat more marked than with coffee. But if no such official “rating service” in wine is applicable to coffee, nonetheless most growing countries try to facilitate green buyers’ efforts through a system of classification, such as Brazil with its MTGB, GTLB, Soft, Strictly Soft, Sweet Cupping, Hard, Hardish, Rioy, etc. And because the product can be seen before brewing, it can also be classified by bean size, such as 14/15, or 17/18 screen, or by the number of imperfections. Or, when directly referring to altitude of growth, most countries will use terms that delineate the differences. Guatemala, for example, rates as follows: Good Washed: 700 meters; Extra Good Washed: 700 to 850 meters; Prime Washed: 850 to 1000 meters, Extra Prime Washed: 1000 to 1200 meters, Semi Hard Bean 1200 to 1350 meters, Hard Bean: 1350 to 1500 meters, Fancy Hard Bean: 1500 to 1600 meters, and Strictly Hard Bean: 1600 to 1700 meters. This varies from country to country, and in fact, in reality, leaves room for “inexactitude.” And if all that is insufficiently confusing, besides washed, there is unwashed and semi-washed. Most countries also give names to their coffees depicting the growing area, such as Guatemala Antigua or Atitlan, or add “European Preparation” to further describe selection and uniformity. Some countries such as Colombia for some time used to simply hope the country name would be sufficiently descriptive when promoting a brand name such as Juan Valdez, and then changed its mind with the arrival of the so-called specialty business, and now is reverting to using origin names like Medellin, Armenia, and Manizales, (referred to as MAMS), or Huilla and Antioquia, among many others. But there are some crucial differences. We must remember that wine is fully processed and bottled before distribution and consumption, whereas coffee is “manufactured” (i.e. roasted, ground, and brewed) at the moment before it is enjoyed. But coffee, like wine, does indeed change from year to year, depending on many variables, the chief one being precipitation during the flowering and cherry development stages, as well as during harvest time. And the same coffee will taste different depending on when it is roasted. For example, the same Central American coffee being picked between November and February will gradually lose its acidity (read: quality), so by October will not taste the same as it did back in March. And the roast development of coffee will have a marked effect on the final taste. In short, two coffees from two different countries could taste more alike than two samples of the same coffee roasted just a few degrees differently. And a similar condition exists regarding differences in grind particularization, to say nothing of the ratio of coffee-to- water, or brewing temperature. To complicate things, of course, we have in coffee the plethora of new designations such as organic, bird-friendly, shade grown, Fair Trade, etc., all of which in fact is more political than having much to do with quality. I could go on, but I hope the above gives the reader the general idea about coffee appellations.
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