July 2008

From Sumatra, with Love

So much fun it get's a dedicated page!

March 2008

Scott vs. Central America

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February 2008

Jordan's field trip to Nicaragua - a report so nice it deserves its own special page!

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A funny thing happened on the way to Brazil. I fell asleep… on an airplane. That just doesn’t happen. The only other time I have slept on a plane was on a flight to New Zealand when I took some pill that made it so I still don’t remember my first full day in the country. Maybe it was the poor selection of movies. Maybe it was the choice of lasagna or chicken. Maybe it was the lack of turbulence and my unbelievably quiet and undemanding seat mates. I woke up only as we hit the ground in Sao Paulo and I am not quite sure how I felt about that. I was confused and hungry.

Straight from the airport and immediately on the road. We stop in Campinas at what is claimed to be the largest mall in Latin America for lunch and some of the finest churrasco in Brazil. The food court is the size of an airport terminal and teeming with people. As skewer after skewer of pure meat is brought to the table, without fancy sauces and gaudy food towers, I am reminded how the rest of the world is not afraid of what they eat. Why do we turn chicken into harmless-looking chicken fingers and even stars, while the rest of the world celebrates the great animals that sustain us? Maybe it is just the lasagna from my flight speaking. I swear it is the same exact lasagna that I had on my first flight over 35 years ago. Somewhere, in some government-owned complex, is a massive cold storage unit where untold millions of tons of this product, made in the 50’s, awaits your next flight.

Yeah so, where was I? I was in Brazil to visit Doutor Coffee, supplier of our Moreninha Formosa as well as to hunt down some quality organic. First off, the organic search was a bust. I met some interesting characters, visited some interesting farms and cupped some ‘fascinating’ coffees. I will leave it at that. I won’t say that I didn’t find any possibilities, but with the difficulties in finding truly good organic Brazil, you kind of have to keep quiet.

Doutor’s  offices are in Espirito Santo do Pinhal (which happens to be the home of Pinhalense, the green coffee milling equipment manufacturer. Late one night we drove by their factory and I felt as if I had viewed Graceland… it brought a tear to my eye). Did I mention that after all my years in the coffee business, this was my first trip to Brazil? The first thing that I notice is that there are no small towns in Brazil. All these names that I have known for years (just look at a map)- Pocos de Caldas, Espirito Santo do Pinhal, Franca, Guaxupe, Belo Horizonte- are all big cities with skyscrapers and busses and, oddly enough, lacking the poverty that one would expect to see. A quick shout out to the Opcao Bar restaurant in Pinhal where Mr. Bento has brought gourmet slow food into this agricultural center. The local Foie Gras and carpaccio were exceptional. I had a three mushroom pasta (all local, wild and none that I was familiar with) paired with some excellent Argentine red wine. Miss Carla, Mr. Bento’s assistant, even took some time out with me to pull some shots at the espresso machine.

Oh yeah right, coffee…. So Doutor’s offices have an impressive QC lab. I finally meet, in person, Guto, their QC guy. Just to get a feel for what our customers are looking for, he lets me take over roasting duties for all of our cuppings for the week. Little did I know that would involve about 50 samples. But it was good. We learned a lot from each other. It was like the Roasters Guild Retreat, where there is nothing like spending a little time over the trier with a fellow coffee fanatic. More on the cuppings later, we have a long road trip to make.

Off early in the morning in an incredibly well-made VW Polo flex fuel car. Did I mention that it was raining? Raining a lot? The whole week I was in Brazil? Did I mention the incredible flowering? The incredible smell of jasmine-like coffee blossoms for hundreds of kilometers?  Before heading off on this trip, all the talk was of the drought in Brazil. The only threat to coffee that I could see through the windshield wipers was the large plantings of sugar cane used to supply Brazil with ethanol. After countless times of hearing, “it is only 30 more kilometers”, we arrive at Fazenda Aurea, high in the Cerrado at about 9:30pm. Of course, from the entrance of the farm to the farmhouse where we are staying is about 13 kilometers and one bizarre story.

 

Sometime in the 70’s a wealthy Brazilian banker came to Serro do Salitre of the Cerrado to become a coffee baron. The Cerrado was not the great coffee growing region that it is now; nonetheless he bought the 13-kilometer long strip of land and got to work. Slowly, he must have lost his mind as this became much more than a farm. He began to create his own world (think of it more in a Willy Wonka way than a creepy Michael Jackson sort of way). He built a grand square on the farm where the farmhouse is located. Across the square (and lower than the house) is a recreated colonial chapel. Surrounding the square is worker housing and workshops. Leading up to the square, he created a grand boulevard (two lanes in each direction) lined with palm trees that he named 5^th Avenue. It is said that when he would come to the farm from the city, he would stand up in the back seat of his convertible Cadillac and wave his hat to the few assembled workers as he made his processional to the main square. Those days are long gone, but the farm is still here. 

That night, trying to sleep in the still-70’s-decorated farmhouse, I wonder why this place was not called Fazenda Mosquito. Throughout the night, through the thin walls of the house, I could here my fellow travelers suffering in that special way that only mosquitoes can bring. At some point in the night, I heard a strange scrambling noise in my room followed by a loud plop. I was afraid to turn on the lights, in fear of attracting even more mosquitoes, but my curiosity got to me. Scrambling around on the floor was perhaps the biggest, fastest toad I had ever seen. It would occasionally take off running, jump about six feet into the air (hopefully to grab a mosquito) and make quite a splat when it hit the floor. I had a new friend.

Fazenda Aurea is made up of 31 separate plots. It sounds like a big farm, but would be called medium size in Brazil. Over the years of cupping, I have found the Moreninha Formosa plot to be unique. Why? Good question, wish I had an answer. It is all Mundo Novo, 1200 meters, full natural, African bed-dried like many of the other plots. For whatever reason, the sweetness and body and chocolate covered cherries, has stood out since I first cupped this plot. Back at Doutor headquarters and cupping blind, this has proved true again. However, during one of the cuppings, another of the coffees was quite unique. It was somewhat floral in aroma with surprising acidity and citrus notes. I asked what this coffee was. They indicated that it was a specific lot from Fazenda Aurea that they wanted my opinion of. I said that I would buy it. The 200 bags from the Alvarado plot should arrive late December. Don’t be shy, ask for samples.

Something else we will be trying next year is raisin coffee from Moreninha Formosa. Our friends at Doutor are committed to quality. Finding a supplier in Brazil that is willing to do 50 bag micro-lots is no easy thing. I am way too happy to know these guys. Raisin coffee is coffee that is left to dry on the tree and well, ends up looking like a raisin. It can be unbelievably sweet and fruity when everything goes right. The problem is that it is susceptible to ferment and molds that can ruin the cup. In hopes of avoiding these problems, Doutor will be harvesting the raisin only from the top half of the tree, where the risk of mold is reduced. Will it work? Ask us next July.

Another coffee that got my attention during the cuppings was from a farm with the humble name of  Fazenda Pedra Grande de Monte Santo de Minas. It warranted a visit. Located in Sul de Minas, this farm looks nothing like what one expects a Brazilian farm to look like. Once again, my expectations are challenged. You can think what you want about Brazil’s efficiency, low cost and 50 million bags of mostly mediocrity; however, worker housing, healthcare and education are about the best I have ever seen. Aren’t these things that we all want?

Pedra Grande looks more like a Central American finca with steep slopes, shade trees and tracts of untouched forest. It is small by Brazilian standards, producing some 3000 bags a year. It is a small paradise. The worker’s houses actually have carports with cars in them. There is a small lake filled with tilapia. A small chicken farm not only produces food, but also that most joyous of coffee fertilizers, chicken poop. The farm has a small plot of old bourbons. These bourbons cupped remarkably full-bodied, unbelievably sweet, rich and chocolaty. Doutor has separated out 120 bags of this coffee that will also arrive towards the end of the year. The rest of the full natural process coffee from the farm also caught my attention with its clean apple notes and will be arriving in February.

There is so much more I could say about my trip to Brazil. However, while I was in Brazil, David was moving to Seattle. It has been over two weeks since I have returned and I am still not caught up (thanks!). We have 26 Bolivia Cup of Excellence samples on the cupping table, so I gotta go. Anything else you want to know, you will just have to give us a call.

- Scott, November 14, 2007

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Colombia, Round Two

Weren't you just in Colombia, you ask? So true, but when I heard about a last-minute opportunity to join some folks on a trip to Quindio, I jumped. Getting a flight turned out to be a small problem, as my trip started on the day a cardiology convention ended in New Orleans - some 30,000 heart surgeons, pharmaceutical manufacturers and stint dealers were all trying to get out of town, and I saw a number of them on my flight to Houston and my connection to Bogota. An article in the latest Wired gave the prices of various organs (kidneys, livers, etc) in various developing nations... a fresh human heart is a bargain in Colombia at $90,000... I am so not going to share a taxi....

There are a number of coffee choices at the Bogota airport... Juan Valdez Cafe, Dunkin Donuts, Donut Factory (they like donuts, I guess - Juan Valdez serves them, too), a couple of other places. Curious pricing note: a pound of coffee at Juan Valdez is priced comparably with US shops, around $10 and up, but a cappuccino is only $1.40, which is, oh, half the price you see here). When you get to the departure waiting room for domestic flights there is one of those grind-and-brew vending machines, only I started to wonder: what if it was only playing a recording of a grinder? I am getting paranoid. As soon as it ran out of happy-face cups it sat quiet anyway, and we all sat and waited for our plane - turns out the Armenia airport was shut down for bad weather, and when they finally boarded us, 3 hours late, I don't think the airport had reopened - they just wanted to move the plane somewhere else.

Finally, Armenia, stopping for late breakfast on the way to a small Quindio community called Genova. Calentado, which literally translates as "reheated," this is a local dish. Kind of like gallo pinto, only better, and everyone makes it differently. At its most basic, this is last night’s rice & beans reheated for breakfast, which leads me to consider the universality of leftovers in the morning, although for me that means pizza, or occasionally spaghetti or cake. Obviously I obsess about food, even while in Latin America. Last year I met a Dutch shelf-stable dairy salesman (the dairy products were shelf-stable; I wasn't sure about him) who traveled frequently in South American and Caribbean nations, and he went on and on about how his greatest pleasure from these trips was trying new tropical fruits, which I guess makes sense for someone surrounded by tetrapacked milk and long-life cheese. So maybe I'm not the only one, and I hope Martin got some guanabana juice.

The offical garment of the Asociación de Cafés Especiales de Génova;
today's prices, including 'C' settlement and currency exchange!

We are traveling with Álvaro Tobón, who runs a mill in the city of Armenia. First we stop at the Asociación de Cafés Especiales de Génova, which is basically a bodega with a cupping room. They buy parchment from local growers, track what comes from who, and consolidate it into larger lots before it goes on to Arabicas. Remember that 45% of the Colombian crop is produced by 5.4% of the farmers? Well, these ain't that 5.4%. These are small-to-midsize farms for the most part, and their yield per hectare is small even by Colombian standards. But the coffee is generally good, and Alvaro has been working with the association, trying to line up loans for projects that will both improve harvest size and reduce environmental impact. To illustrate his goals, he piles us back into his truck and we head for the farm of Guillermo Lopez.

Guillermo Lopez; pulp composting in Armenia

The Lopez farm is large and well run. This year his total production is about 1500 bags. The trees are well-tended, and we see signs of regular pruning. In this part of the country, coffee trees can flower all year round, and we see just that - branches with flower buds, greens, and almost-ripe cherries. I've been hearing about a broca resurgence in Colombia, but there is no indication here; the beneficio is clean, and he carefully separates each day's fermentation tank yields into separate areas on the patio. He has a really nice homemade dryer for rainy days - powered by cisco (parchment peelings), and the water from fermentation and washing goes through a filtration system before being released. Guillermo is also composting all of the cherry fruit pulp before using it as mulch and amendment, which - like the water filtration - is somewhat rare in Colombia. He spoke with great gusto about all aspects of his farm, including his insistence on the pulped coffee resting for precisely 6 hours in the fermentation tank. At some point he mentioned his 6 children, who we later saw - and there were 7 of them - which makes me wonder if he ferments the coffee for 7 hours. Anyway. Like a lot of farms, this one has vast swathes of untouched rainforest, and there is no indication that it is going to be razed for cultivation.

seven is the new six

Now, when we arrived at this farm we noticed soldiers all over the place. Armenia is one of the hottest spots in the Army vs. FARC war, and thanks to Plan Colombia, these teenage soldiers have nice new uniforms and boots and guns and all that. One of them casually pointed his grenade launcher at me, and every time I moved it stayed on target. Nice. When we left to go to another farm we "borrowed" 9 soldiers as an escort, which brings me to this realization: I am along for the ride. When I go to Colombia or Nicaragua or whatever, I may have some sort of agenda - particular farms or mills - but in the end, the person showing me around is in charge. I go where they want to go, see what they want me to see.

that's not a canteloupe, or, where's Oswaldo

We make a detour at a "coffee school." The Associación de Cafés Especiales de Génova gives lectures (with slideshow!) for local farmers and laborers where they discuss everything from cultivation and insect control to the benefits of various certification programs. We gather up our escort and head for the farm of a man I'll call Señor Broca. This farm is, I swear, a museum for everything you can do wrong with coffee trees. 40 hectares of coffee, primarily typica and caturra, but with variedad colombia thrown in haphazardly. As on the Lopez farm, I see tree branches with flowers, greens, and almost-ripes. But I also see ripes, and over-ripes, and dried cherries. The trees are over-grown, haven't been pruned in forever, there are dead leaves from shade trees amongst the limbs, there are leaves and dropped fruit underneath. This is broca heaven. I look closer and, yes, I see them in the fruit. Looking around, I see garbage strewn around the farm - plastic bags and sardine cans, fruit peels, whatever - the places looks and smells like a dump.

welcome to brocaville

This guy, just like Guillermo Lopez, is proud of his farm, and leads us to his beneficio. There we learn that he takes every day's pickings, pulps the cherry, and lets the parchment sit in the fermentation tank... for a long... long... time. He empties the tank every week or so. Peering into the tank, we are looking at several days' coffee in scummy, mold-scented water. I can't look him in the eye. On the way back to the truck I notice a couple of really nice, healthy trees - only they are canephora. What the hell is robusta doing here?

everything that can go wrong is in this tank

We drop off our military escort and, five minutes later, get motioned over to the side of the road at a checkpoint, where we get seriously patted down and our luggage is searched. Okay, that's par for the course in Colombia, where you can't get into a bar without being wanded, and airport security for international flights means walking through at least 3 x-ray portals (plus another military patdown). Bomb-sniffing dogs and their police/soldier/militia buddies roam the more affluent parts of Bogota, and you can't pull into a parking garage or get near the airport without opening the trunk of your car. There are 8 million people in Bogota, and they are all along for the ride.

The next morning I realize I am allergic to Armenia. I'm a wreck, and people are sick of saying 'salud.' We go to a couple of mills, one of which is nice and clean and everything is running smoothly, the conveyor belt at the final sorting line is rolling relatively slowly, the workers seem happy. Not the biggest mill in town, but they've milled a good 500 bags of coffee this week, and they've got enough parchment to do perhaps another 250. Then to another mill - it looks like it hasn't been cleaned in 10 years - they equipment is vibrating badly, beans are flying everywhere, the final sortings look lousy, which mostly has to do with the quality of the parchment coming in. I see about half a dozen towers of bags - parchment waiting to me milled. Each stack is 12 bags wide by 12 bags long, 18 high. That's almost 2600 bags of parchment per stack, 2000+ bags of finished product each, about 45 containers total. It may not be good coffee, but they move enough.

it takes eleven fingers to beat broca

It's getting late, so we head off to the El Eden airport to catch our flight back to Bogota. The weather is starting to look ugly, but we figure as long as we can get off the ground, everything will be candy. We board and I notice most of the seatback pockets are missing their barf bags. Our flight does take off, and we seem to fly half the way back to Bogota inside a thunderhead, but then it starts to clear. As we are landing - maybe 200 feet above the ground - the plane suddenly pulls sharply up and retracts the landing gear. A couple of minutes later the pilot explains that there was another plane on the runway, and that we'll be making another attempt in a few minutes. After we are safely on the ground, I thank the pilot and tell him that was exciting. He replies, Not for us. I think, I'm along for the ride.

- David, April 5, 2007

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New Crop Central Visit

By now I should be tired of this. The line is, “If you have seen one coffee tree, you have seen them all.” Well it is not true; there is always more to see even if revisiting the same farms year after year. In the 10 days of my travel through Nicaragua, Panama and Costa Rica I probably visited more farms and mills than I have on any other trip. So many, in fact, that I feel I should just report on some of the highlights.

The smell of wood fires and the crowd of people clamoring to meet arrivals as you leave the terminal in Managua always make me feel like I have truly left home. Throughout the countryside thousands of new FSLN flags line the roadway up to Matagalpa. A kinder, gentler, older Daniel Ortega is once again president. This time around he is lighter on vitriol and party-speak and seemingly more open to true reform. If anywhere deserves peace and progress, it is Nicaragua.

We are visiting with Erwin Mierisch, whose family supplies us with very fine coffees. Their San Jose estate only continues to improve and we think this coffee will soon become their best. You can learn a lot about what to expect from coffee by getting to know the people that grow it. When you see continuous improvements year after year, you get to trust that a supplier is really working to get out better coffee. Among improvements this year are upgrades to the wet mills and a brand new dry mill. Also, they are searching for a sociologist to help them audit their relationship with their employees in hopes of finding ways to make meaningful changes. It is an approach I have never seen before and it is quite welcome. We had a long round of cupping at their mill of early pickings. The biggest surprise was this year’s Limoncillo Java variety. This year it has an unexpectedly bright, citrusy acidity that one normally wouldn’t associate with this variety.  We have a small amount of this coffee arriving in May.

So off to Panama.... More cupping, more farms, more mills. The Volcan area is proving yet again to be the primo area for Panamanian coffees. Carlos of Carmen Estate shows off new improvements to their mill. We also take a hike through the wondrous Bambito Estate. It is amazing that the family thought they might sell the farm a few years back. With a little encouragement, and milling done by the Carmen Estate, it showed up as the number two coffee in last year’s Best of Panama competition. We have bought all of the coffee from this small farm and expect it to arrive in May. All over Volcan, there is quite a bit of replanting going on, with mainly Typica, Bourbon and some Gesha as the preferred varieties. If Boquete is becoming more serious about retirement communities and tourism, then Volcan is becoming more serious about coffee.

Costa Rica, again, proved to be full of surprises. I must admit that long ago I gave up on the idea of their being great Costas. The blossoming of micro-mills over the past few years has changed all that. Micro-mills are nothing new. It is how the better Panamas have been prepared for years. A micro-mill is a mill that processes some 1-7 or so containers a year, usually from a single farm, allowing for true estate coffees. It is estimated that there is now some 128 of these micro-mills in Costa Rica. But before visiting the coffee, another round of cupping. 25 early crop samples to work through with a few real winners. I score the Herbazu Estate from Naranjo a 95 even though it is a coffee I have never been able to get my hands on.

We make the foggy drive up to Tarrazu to visit Finca Toña. Located high (1800-1950 meters elevation) above Santa Maria de Dota, this is about as high as coffee gets in the Tarrazu region and I suppose it explains the winey cup. This coffee, which is milled by Biocafe, is processed for us as a pulped natural, adding sweetness and body to he cup. We also visit Cerro La Pastora high above San Marcos. It is a most traditional Tarrazu farm with quite a bit of shade for the region.

Next day we are off to visit suppliers in the Central and West Valleys. Both farms that I visit in the Central Valley are testaments to the families who are determined to stay in coffee despite their proximity to San Jose and the housing developments springing up around them. Cerro Alto and Brumas del Zurqui (which produce our Vino de Arabia) are both old, small family-run farms with an eye on quality. Both farms indicate that they could not buy land to increase coffee production. With current land values, coffee would never pay for itself, so they can only maintain what they have. It is a story that is now true of much of Costa Rica. They both contain an interesting mix of varieties that create coffees with huge aromas.

In the West Valley we stop in at a number of farms in the Naranjo area (My personal favorite in Costa Rica) that will be supplying us again this year. Again, I visit the Herbazu Estate. It is my third visit to this tiny, perfectly run farm and I am expecting to once again hear, “No soup for you”. Oddly enough, I am offered 150 bags of coffee and I immediately break my rule of not buying anything while on a trip. This is a coffee that will completely change your view of Costa Rican coffee. 

 - Scott, February 1, 2007

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Rule Colombia

What do you do with your drying shed when you run out of coffee?