JulieCraves

Coffee reviews / Latin America / Retail and specialty roasters / Starbucks

Coffee review: Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexico

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #41.

Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexicois produced by around 900 small farmers on 3200 ha of land in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas [1]. Many of the farms are near or adjacent to the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, which contains the northernmost cloud forests in the world and is considered as one of the greatest biodiversity sites of North America. El Triunfo totals 119,000 ha, of which 93,458 ha corresponds to a buffer zone and the rest to the core areas. Core areas are primary forest owned by the government. The buffer zone consists of privately owned lands, about 60% of which are forested. The remainder is agricultural, with shade coffee being the dominant crop; up to 70% is rustic shade.

Originally this coffee was to be a temporary offering, but proved so popular that it is on the permanent Starbucks menu.

Background

This coffee-sourcing is part of a partnership with Conservation International (CI) which began in 1998. Originally, this was to be a three-year program with CI providing technical assistance to producers encouraging them to continue eco-friendly growing practices, and Starbucks as a dependable buyer. This partnership has continued with some new wrinkles, including the development of Starbucks C.A.F.E. practices.

This project has not been without controversy. One main gripe has been that the contracts with Starbucks paid above-market prices, but the beans went through the large exporter and processor Agroindustrias de Mexico (AMSA), which took a cut of the price. This doesn’t seem like an unusual arrangement and perhaps the only practical one with between a large buyer and dozens of cooperatives. At some point Starbucks did try to deal directly with producers, but the cooperatives were unable to arrange shipment.

Some of the co-ops withdrew from participation. Various reasons have been given. According to CI’s report to USAID [1], when the world price of coffee rose above the price already agreed to in the contracts, producers reneged and sold to other buyers (a not too-uncommon occurrence). Some felt that, after a long struggle for autonomy, that they were once again beholden to middlemen [2]. CI apparently negotiated many of the initial contracts, and some producers later regretted signing when they found out Starbucks was the end buyer (was that not in the contracts?). There were also objections to quality demands being imposed on them.

Nonetheless, the arrangement with Starbucks did and has increased income for many of the farmers. One co-op mentioned as a participant in a New York Times article was identified by a Fair Trade advocate as being organizationally weak, not well suited to judging the quality of their own beans, and unable to seek out other buyers. If that’s the case, this co-op may not be qualified for Fair Trade certification, and therefore Starbucks might be the best option for them, at least at this time.

While there is a lack of publicly available objective information on the outcomes of the Chiapas coffee project, from what I have read it has had an overall positive net impact. Encouraging and promoting organic and shade-grown coffee is a major goal of El Triunfo conservation efforts. At least for some period of time, cooperatives that withdrew from the CI/Starbucks program had a hard time finding buyers, especially those that would pay high prices and invest in their communities. If Starbucks is purchasing an average of 1.7 million pounds of coffee from this area every year, this is likely a good thing, especially if these producers do not have other options for selling their beans.

Finally, we need to bear in mind that this is a certified organic coffee, but it does not have shade certification by Smithsonian or Rainforest Alliance. As mentioned above, however, the coffee grown in this area, especially in the El Triunfo buffer zone, is traditionally grown in the shade, often diverse shade.

Let’s move on to the coffee
Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexico is billed as a medium roast. For a company known to over-do the roasting, I was surprised to see that “medium” was actually “medium.” I think good Mexican coffees are delicate and sweet and should be roasted light, but I suppose medium was a good compromise to cater to the tastes of Starbucks customers. I was also surprised to see that in a French press, this coffee was fresh enough to have a decent bloom.

This coffee was what we expected from a Mexican coffee: pleasant, approachable, smooth, and well-balanced. It was fairly sweet with hints of chocolate; a couple people thought that rather than milk chocolate it was a more bittersweet dark chocolate, perhaps due to the roast. One person tasted cinnamon. Overall, comments were quite positive. A few people with known anti-Starbucks sentiments were grudgingly impressed. This is a decent coffee that most people should find more than acceptable. When the votes were tallied, it came away with a solid 3 motmots.

Because of its size, Starbucks falls victim to its own success. Providing a consistent product at such large volumes inevitably means lower quality, buying through exporters (and thus lower prices for producers) and an inability to truly police the growing methods of thousands of farmers. Still, I can think of few other offerings by any of the big roasters that are as positive for the environment as the Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexico. It sure beats Kraft’s 30% Rainforest Alliance certified (and 70% mystery-sourced) Yuban, and tastes better to boot.

[1] Conservation International and Starbucks Coffee Company. 2007. The Conservation Coffee Alliance.  USAID Contract # 596-A-00-04-00039-00, Annual and Final Report 2004-2007.

[2] Gonzalez, A. A. and R. Nigh. 2004. Smallholder participation and certification of organic farm products in Mexico. Journal of Rural Studies 21:449-460.

Retail and specialty roasters / Smithsonian Bird-Friendly

Birds & Beans now available

The Birds & Beans: The Good Coffee web site is now up and running. Since I posted about this initiative, which offers only Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffee, there have been a few tweaks and changes.

  • The price is a tad higher than first announced: two pounds for $19.25 plus shipping.
  • Looks like you can subscribe from anywhere in the U.S., not just New England (Canadian customers should order from Birds & Beans Canada, which has a wider choice of coffees and no subscription restrictions).
  • Right now, they do not seem to be putting the country of origin on any of the bags, and only mentioning Colombia as the origin of the medium-roast coffee on the web site. This might mean they will source from various Bird-Friendly certified farms and focus on a flavor profile. Personally, I think promoting specific origins is a critical part of educating the public. I also think that birders, to whom this line is targeted, would be especially enthusiastic and receptive to the specific stories behind some of the Bird-Friendly certified farms. So much research has been done at some of them, they could put a bird list and photos on the web site — and birders, of all consumers, would totally get this. Big missed marketing opportunity, in my opinion.

There is an attractive page with photos of eight species of migratory birds. I assume that there will be some sort of text accompanying them at some point, as they aren’t even identified. They are all migratory species that breed in North America and winter in the tropics, but not all species that depend on, or even winter in, coffee farms. There are also nice bios of the bird conservationists that have been supporting this effort.

We have been trying out all three varieties of Birds & Beans coffees this week. I had intended on posting a longer review later, but since I will be in Nicaragua when the trial period expires, it looks like now is the time to fire off our first impressions. I won’t rate them with motmots, since they have not been tasted by as many people yet as usual.

These were all roasted by Wicked Joe. No roast date on the package.

The “Scarlet Tanager” dark roast is really dark. Starbucks fans, line up here. I was told this is currently from Peru, and aside from a few small microlots sometimes offered by other roasters, I have yet to meet a Peruvian coffee I really like. So this was not my cup, but I did find it very smooth for such a dark roast. Folks who liked a darker roast in our office that have tried it so far were happy with it.

The medium roast “Chestnut-sided Warbler” was perhaps a tad on the dark side of medium, with all beans showing an oil sheen and many oil spots. There was evidence on some beans that it had been roasted too rapidly (this creates little divots in the beans where rapid expansion pops a hunk off). I presume the actual origin of this is Mesa de los Santos, which has long been the only Bird-Friendly certified farm in Colombia. We’ve reviewed and commented on this origin previously, so I won’t go into the details here. This coffee garnered the most diverse comments. A few wished it had been just a tad lighter so some of the more sweeter tones would emerge. Others got the sweetness right away, and pegged a cherry-like fruit flavor. It was smooth and quite bright for a medium/dark roast.

The light roast “Wood Thrush” was the winner of the group. As of this writing, it is sourced from Mexico, and had the chocolate sweetness one expects from this origin. It was especially good in a French press, where it had character and some complexity. Brewed, it was just a nice, pleasant classic Latin American cup. Overall, it just had more going on in the cup than the other two.

The primary audience for these coffees is birders. Most birders I know drink a lot of dark, pedestrian coffee. I think they will find the Birds & Beans coffee a real step up, but not too different from the flavor and roast profiles they are accustomed to, or so exotic that they don’t “get it.” The “Wood Thrush” will also please those that have somewhat more refined palates. All the coffees should completely satisfy people who really care about habitat and biodiversity preservation and want it fully represented in their cup.

If you try these coffees, please leave some impressions in the comments — both on the taste and your thoughts on the web site and “theme.” I’m especially interested in what birders think!

Climate change / Coffee and the environment / Keurig Green Mountain / Retail and specialty roasters

Green Mountain to fund climate change projects

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters will award four grants of $200,000 each to organizations with ideas to combat climate change in four core areas: transportation-related emissions (including GMCR’s product shipping), threats to coffee-growing communities (enormous, given that climate change is already pushing coffee production to higher altitudes), building political will, and empowering individual action. Grant recipients will also be required to meet with GMCR twice a year to help the company work on reducing and mitigating its own carbon footprint.

The last two grant categories seem a little amorphous, but I’m quite enthusiastic about the potential for development of programs that can help farmers adjust to climate change (for those that can; the solution for many farmers may actually be to transition to other crops, unfortunately).

This grant project is part of a larger effort by GMCR to focus on climate change through changing business practices and raising awareness (you can read their statement on climate change here).

Spending $800,000 in the current economic crisis by a company that sells what is essentially a “luxury” item is, I think, a pretty strong statement of commitment to environmental responsibility. Kudos to GMCR.