June 2006

Coffee reviews / Latin America

Hacienda La Esmeralda Jaramillo Especial

I will be writing in the future about the Cup of Excellence and the Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality award programs for specialty coffees, and the role they can play in bringing attention to small farms, roaster relationships, and quality sustainable coffees.  Another one of these competitions, which it is timely now for me to mention, is the Best of Panama competition, sponsored by the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama. For the last three years, one farm has placed first in this competition, Hacienda la Esmeralda, in Chiriqui province on the slopes of Volcan Baru in western Panama (click map to enlarge).

This story is exceptional in several ways.  First, the bean and coffee are unique.  Second, this coffee has set records at auction, with the 2006 lot being the first green coffee to sell for over US$50 a pound green and US$100 a pound roasted.  I’ll give a little background here, because the cash-poor but burningly curious C&C coffee tasting panel raided their piggy banks and sprang for a half-pound of Esmeralda from Intelligentsia.

The Esmeralda Jaramillo Especial story: Hacienda La Esmeralda was purchased by the Peterson family in 1996. Previously, different coffee varieties had been planted about the farm, which has altitudes range from 1,450 to 1,700 meters.  Daniel Peterson cupped beans from all over the farm, and discovered the pleasant citrusy flavor present in the mixed beans from the farm as a whole were being flavored by some outstanding beans from a 50 hectare plot in one small valley at the high end (1550 m) of the farm: the Esmeralda Especial.

The microclimate of this valley is quite cold.  The bean is an arabica variety called Geisha or Gesha, a long-bean type with Ethiopia heritage brought to Panama in the 1960s via Costa Rica. It is low-yielding — 50 to 100 (60 kg) bags a year — in part because of the long “internodes” or space between the beans. It is likely a combination of the climate, bean, and (wet) processing that brings us this unique cup.

Auction price history: The Esmeralda set price history in the 2004 online green coffee auction, sponsored by the the Specialty Coffee Association of America. That lot sold for US$21 a pound and was huge news in the coffee industry (the average lot goes for about US$4 a pound). This year the lot, of five 60-kg bags, sold for US$50.25 a pound.

The lot was purchased by the Small Axe Coffee Alliance (Sweet Maria’s, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Intelligentsia Coffee Roasters, Groundwork Coffee Company, and the Norwegian company Kaffa).  The first out of the gate with a public offering of roasted coffee was Intelligentsia. Sweet Maria’s offered the green beans as a set along with beans from the second and third place winners, Bambito Estate and Carmen Estate.

The farm and environmental sustainability: Hacienda La Esmeralda is Rainforest Alliance certified, and their coffee won first place Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality in 2004 and 2006. The farm is not certified organic, and does use glyphosate as a herbicide, and some fertilizers, according to the “Sustainability” portion of its web site. Use of pesticides is not specified, but it sounds like they are usually avoided.

The page indicates that there are about 75 large trees per hectare which add to the leaf litter of the coffee plants, and there is a photo of coffee growing under shade in their photo gallery. The farm does not prune trees during bird nesting or migration season.

As an ecologist, I would like to comment on a statement on the page: “A producing farm undoubtedly has a higher animal biomass than virgin forest as well as a higher photosynthetic rate. It is producing’ — it is not in a resting equilibrium as is a forest.”

Animal biomass is not a relevant yardstick of sustainability (although I don’t know if that’s the point that was being made, necessarily). Here’s why: A cattle pasture, with cattle, would have animal biomass that far exceeds tropical virgin forest of comparable size, but one could hardly say that is a makes it a better or more sustainable use of the land.  Likewise, photosynthetic rates themselves alone don’t have a lot of meaning. Fast-growing plants have higher photosynthetic rates, which are also influenced by light, temperature, vapor pressure deficit, and carbon dioxide.  Fast or slow, one is not “better” than another. And I’d venture to say that a tropical forest — any forest for that matter — is never at a “resting equilibrium” but is always dynamic, and always “productive”!  I’m inclined to take exception to the statement “Enormous tracts of virgin forest have little to do with sustaining people…”  As “the air conditioner of the earth,” tracts of virgin tropical forest sustain us all through many important ecosystem functions.

That being said (and whatever the intent), this is not obviously not sun coffee, it is RA certified, and the web site does note other environmentally-friendly practices. Stay tuned for our impressions of this highly-touted bean!

Coffee regions

Attention: East Timor

I’d like to occasionally profile a coffee-growing country, where the current situation merits special attention from coffee consumers, whose purchase of sustainable coffee from the country can provide extra benefit.  I’ll try to include these items: the current status, why your purchase will help, cultivation and characteristics of coffee in the country, and some links to sustainable coffees.  You can usually expect the C&C tasting panel to follow up with a review of one or more coffees from the country.

I will start with East Timor, half of one of the easternmost coffee-growing islands in Indonesia.

Situation: Once a Portuguese colony, which was invaded by Indonesia in 1975, only a few days after declaring independence. For over 20 years, conflict and clashes gripped the island as the Timorese resisted the Indonesians.  East Timor joined the UN as an independent nation in 2002, but clashes continue, currently involving violence between eastern and western soldiers that is at a crisis stage requiring international intervention. Some background can be found at BBC News.

The role of coffee: East Timor’s economy has been crippled by the ongoing fighting, and its people are among the poorest in the world.  Coffee is one of the most important mainstays of the East Timorese economy.   In 1994, with help from USAID, the Cooperativa Cafe Timor was organized, and is now the largest single-source producer of organically certified coffee in the world. It has 20,000 farm families and employs another 3,000 local people during processing time, about 25% of the population! Starbucks has been a major customer of East Timor coffee; it was used
in their Arabian Mocha Timor blend, which is currently listed as out of stock.  May and June are harvesting time for coffee in East Timor, and the current wave of violence has nearly stopped production, with coffee not making it to the processing mills, many of which are unmanned due to the fighting.

Coffee Review notes: “Buying a Timor coffee at this moment in history means making a small but valuable gesture of support for one of the many peoples of the world caught up in sectarian and political conflict.” Not only does buying specialty coffee from East Timor help the people, it will also help the environment, adding value to biodiverse farmland when so much forest and farmland was napalmed and destroyed in the war.

About East Timor coffee: There are two main growing regions in East Timor, Aifu and the higher altitude Maubesse. The bean grown most often in Timor is a natural hybrid between arabica and canephora (robusta), often called Hibrido Timor or some variation (it is also used to cross with the Caturra variety to make Catimor, which is higher yielding than either parent, but not as good as either one; more on botanical varieties here).

East Timor has some rugged terrain and a very hot climate.  Coffee is always grown under shade, the only way the plants would survive.  Coffee is grown on small plots, in a primitive and nearly wild state. Because the farmers have not been able to afford chemicals, East Timor coffee is organic.

Coffees are wet-processed in the new mills.  However, the 2006 crop is in question due to the current civil unrest described above, and it may be that coffee that comes from East Timor from this season will be in limited supply and dry processed.

Variously described as sweet and nutty, medium-bodied, with a sweet cedar finish, cleaner than Sumatrans, with more acidity than Javas, and generally clean and mild. You can read some reviews of older crops at Coffee Review.

Map image: pbs.org.

Blends/Multiple / Caribou Coffee / Coffee reviews / Retail and specialty roasters

Coffee review: Caribou Rainforest Blend

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #3.

Today, a more pedestrian coffee, the organic and Fair Trade Rainforest Blend from Caribou Coffee, a Starbucks rival in many northern states.  Caribou not only has better coffee, in my opinion, but clearly has a stronger commitment to sustainability.  As I wrote about before, Caribou is on its way to having half of its beans Rainforest Alliance certified.  It also supports Coffee Kids, Grounds for Health (women’s health in coffee producing counties), the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and helped build a medical clinic in Guatemala.


The coffee: This blend is certified Fair Trade and organic, and is labeled as shade grown.  The web site states the beans are from Papua New Guinea, Guatemala, Mexico, and Brazil.

The beans: It is given a roast darkness of “6” on a 10-point scale.

Brewed: The first sip brought us all a surprising “zing” that Coal Tit accurately described as “juicy.”  Contrary to logic, this effect was hard to detect when a gold filter was used, but seemed to show up better with an unbleached paper filter after several trials. I find complex coffees really intriguing, but for the most part, on a daily basis I do not want to be mindful of my coffee.  I want it to taste good, but I don’t want to pay attention to it every time I sip it.  The Rainforest blend fit the bill.  Star[bucks]ling found it to be sweet, bright, and crisp.  Really, you can’t say a lot more than that.  But after our previous more flavorful coffee tastings, he went on to try to come up with more subtle tastes. “You don’t get any kind of wood?” he asked.  Uh, no.  But good for you!

Bottom line: We expected this to be a pretty ho-hum, good but without any distinguishing characteristics.  We were wrong and pleasantly surprised.  Pleasant is a good word, not complex or fascinating, but just distinct enough to be interesting, very balanced, clean and mild, a nice everyday coffee.

When to drink this coffee (field oriented): All day long, doing spring migration counts or breeding bird census work, even on warm days.

We’re rating this 3.5 motmots. This average came about from lower scores from people who like more forthright flavors, and high scores from those who reward friendly coffees they can drink all day.

Fair and Direct Trade

Intelli on Fair Trade

Geoff Watts of Intelligentsia Coffee wrote a long e-mail lucidly explaining the shortcomings of Fair Trade and Intelli’s strong commitment to farmer relationships, posted at green LA girl. It’s excellent and insightful.

First, he defines sustainable coffee as being profitable to the farmer, enough to enable him to invest, not just subsist; and not damaging to the ecosystem, so the land is preserved for generations.  He goes on to describe

  • the many factors that go into the cost of producing quality coffee, and how the Fair Trade model does not have a mechanism for rewarding quality or taking into account the cost of living and other differentials that occur among farmers of different areas,
  • how much of the FT minimum price actually gets to the farmer, and how the FT minimum also often ends up being the maximum,
  • why Intelligentsia would rather spend ten cents a bag in the producing company, rather than spending it to put a FT sticker on their coffee bags,
  • the depth of Intelli’s relationships with their coffee producers, which dramatically highlights the importance of purchasing coffee from roasters with these types of relationships,
  • and how the FT model is beneficial to and works best with commercial and entry-level specialty coffee.

Many thanks to Geoff for writing and to Siel for posting this.  It really helps consumers (and me!) to understand sustainability issues and make, um, intelligent decisions about the best coffees to drink to support farmers and the environment.  Go give it a read.

Birds and other biodiversity / Research on coffee growing

Research: Shade coffee farms as habitat for monkeys

Williams-GuillÁ©n, K., C. McCann, J.C. MartÁ­nez SÁ¡nchez, and F. Koontz.  2006. Resource availability and habitat use by mantled howling monkeys in a Nicaraguan coffee plantation: can agroforests serve as core habitat for a forest mammal? Animal Conservation 9: 331-338.

The incredible contact roars of Mantled Howler Monkeys (Alouatta palliata) are a frequent wake-up call to visitors to the New World tropics.  They were studied in a Nicaraguan shade coffee plantation, which had a diverse (60+ species) canopy which insured that preferred foods were available to the monkeys year-round. The monkeys did not avoid areas of coffee plantations, but stuck to the larger trees. The authors concluded that shade coffee can serve as alternate wildlife habitat and corridors between forest fragments for howling monkeys and possibly other forest mammals.

Africa / Coffee reviews

Coffee review: Rocket Coffee Company Ethiopian Sidamo

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #2.

The main reason I launched the C&C tasting panel was because Larry of Rocket Coffee Roasters in Phoenix wrote to me and generously offered a sample for review. He sent an organic, Fair Trade Ethiopian Sidamo, roasted on May 25.  It got delayed due to the holiday weekend, and we convened our first panel on June 1.

The coffee: Most coffee in Ethiopia is grown in shade, at least half in medium or heavy shade. I’m pretty sure all Ethiopian organic/FT coffees are from the Oromia cooperative, and all their coffees are said to be forest-grown. This is a dry-processed bean — I believe all the Ethiopians I’ve tasted so far have been washed. The dry processed beans are supposed to have more body and earthiness than their counterparts.

The beans: The roast looked a bit past full city, with a mix of some lighter beans in with the dark. For the life of me, I could not place the smell of the beans when we opened the bag.  Star[bucks]ling immediately said, “Cherries!” Risky Kingbird thought it smelled sweet.  I didn’t even think it smelled like coffee. It had a musty odor to me, which I later found out is not unusual in a dry process Ethiopian.  Karen (“PhillyVireo”), a former coffee vendor, immediately identified it as an Ethiopian before we told her what it was.

Brewed: Piping hot, both  Star[bucks]ling and Risky Kingbird thought it had a tea-llike taste. “It’s almost like having a tea bag in your coffee!” Star[bucks]ling said.  Meanwhile, I was sort of speechless.  This coffee was so distinct I didn’t know how to describe it.  It only took a minute or two before the flavors developed and we all had the same Eureka moment: Berries.  Lots and lots of full berry flavor. Risky Kingbird did not like the aftertaste, but the rest of us found it extremely nice, and very long lasting.

In a french press: None of us liked this coffee better in a french press. We found it mellower, but less distinctive; the berry flavor just didn’t come through. Several of us immediately tasted what we could only describe as cardboard (wood? paper?).  Risky Kingbird, CrackedCorvid, and PhillyVireo thought it brighter as a french press, while Star[bucks]ling and I found it heavy.

More professional opinions: Rocket describes this bean as “A true and classic representation of the best Ethiopian. Blackberries, currants and deep, dark chocolate provide exotic flavor and a medium body.”  A Sweet Marias review of a dry Sidamo described it as funky and a bit musty, or earthy with fresh leather (I think this was the “cardboard” smell/taste I detected. Coffee Review offers a nice discussion of characteristics of wet and dry processed Ethiopians.

Bottom line: Complex implies a variety of overlapping flavors, perhaps identifiable to more sophisticated drinkers.  To us, “deep” seemed a better description, lovely fruity notes that began softly, climbed in intensity, then waned gracefully, lingered pleasantly — a smooth berry symphony.  Maybe not an everyday coffee, but surely a good choice when you want something different.

We’re rating this 3.5 motmots; the average was a bit higher than that, but I can’t make any more fractional motmots.

When to drink this coffee (field oriented): Owing to the nice body and grand, fruity flavor, the Rocket Coffee Roaster’s Ethiopian Sidamo had a dessert feel to us.  Drink it after a long day in the field, during the evening’s group meeting comparing notes and compiling data around a rough wooden table, with the coffee matching relaxed, satisfied, and mellow moods.