Coffee reviews

Africa / Coffee reviews

Coffee Review: Green Mountain Gombe Reserve

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #24.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Gombe Reserve.

Recently I posted an overview of coffee from Tanzania, an east African country best known for their marketing of peaberry coffees. In the western part of the country, near the shores of Lake Tanganyika and the town of Kigoma, lies Gombe Stream National Park where researcher Jane Goodall began studying chimpanzees in 1960. This area is also the source of Green Mountain’s new Gombe Reserve coffee, via the 2,700-member Kalinzi Cooperative.

Deforestation has isolated Gombe’s chimpanzees, whose population has declined to fewer than 100 individuals, within the small national park. This severely limits their range and ability to enlarge their communities. This coffee will makes a significant contribution to the preservation of the Gombe chimps.  I can’t do any better than to quote from the Jane Goodall Institute web site:

Those who purchase this high-quality coffee are supporting cultivation of a sustainable, chimpanzee-friendly crop grown by farmers in the impoverished Kigoma region of western Tanzania. The coffee is shade-grown (meaning trees aren’t cut down). What’s more, because chimpanzees don’t like coffee beans, they don’t raid the fields, thus avoiding human-wildlife conflict — an increasing, life-threatening problem in areas where human and wildlife live in proximity.

JGI hopes the partnership with Kigoma coffee growers will result in a new leafy corridor connecting vital rangelands from which the Gombe chimpanzees have been cut off due to deforestation. The corridor will allow the chimpanzees to expand their feeding range and mingle with other chimpanzee groups, which is vital for genetic diversity and disease resistance.

By connecting the 2,700 small-scale farmers in Kigoma’s Kalinzi Cooperative with new markets and introducing new quality-control and production methods, JGI and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is helping the farmers significantly boost their income and coffee production. This gives farmers an incentive to work with JGI in the future to set aside land for the chimpanzees.

If key villages reserve 10 to 20 percent of their land, there will be an interlinked, multi-village forest reserve, providing additional habitat to chimpanzees and connecting Gombe National Park to forest reserves in Burundi.

The only thing that could make you feel better about this coffee than all that is if it were also incredibly delicious.  Folks, this coffee is!

This is a medium roast, and the beans had a sweet smell, with hints of honey, flowers, and even a little tobacco. It was a distinctively African smell, but seemed unique somehow.

With its proximity to Kenya, I think we all expected this Tanzanian coffee to have the wine-like tones so characteristic of Kenyans.  Instead, we were surprised by the little citrus kick when piping hot and the undertone of fruit that followed that was so reminiscent of an Ethiopian coffee. Finally, when cooler, came the tart wine finish.

This coffee was marvelously complex, but not jarringly so, as some Africans can be.  It harmoniously went from one flavor to the next, each nicely balanced. The bird song it evoked for us was that of the Yellow-breasted Chat: full of interesting and sometimes unusual notes, all coming from an enigmatic source. There was only one shortcoming in the Gombe Reserve — we felt it failed brewed in drip coffee maker, even using a gold filter. The loss of character was nearly complete. Please prepare this special coffee in a French press, Chemex , Eva Cafe Solo, or  vacuum pot. This is seriously good coffee — 4 motmots.

Blends/Multiple / Coffee reviews

Coffee review: Higher Ground Roasters

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #23.

Higher Ground is an Alabama roaster that carries only certified Fair Trade, certified organic, and shade grown coffee. Shade coffees are not labeled certified, although some do come from Smithsonian (SMBC) certified sources; unfortunately the fee to use the seal can sometimes be cost-prohibitive to a small roaster in the same way that the certification fee can be unaffordable for farms and co-ops. Because so few Rainforest Alliance certified coffees are also certified organic and Fair Trade, as well as the company being uncomfortable with some of RA’s certifying practices, these have not been on the offering list.  Instead, Higher Ground partner Alex Varner visits source farms (and knows his birds, by the way!), or relies on his importers to evaluate shade. He is actively working to find ways to improve this system, and is surely one of the most committed-to-sustainability and candid roasters I’ve ever corresponded with.

Higher Ground is a member of a number of environmental/sustainability organizations, including 1% For The Planet. Among other initiatives, they also offset their energy usage by purchasing renewable energy, use 100% recycled materials and biodegradable corn plastics as often as possible, and donate their waste as compost to local organic farms (I presume that means coffee waste!). They partner with a number of non-profit organizations, donating a good chunk of the proceeds from special-label blends for fundraising. I am extremely impressed with this company! (More on Higher Ground: Cup of coffee with a conscience — Birmingham Business Journal.)

We tried three of their coffees.

Bolivia. This medium roast is from the familiar CENAPROC co-op in the Yungas region. This co-op has twice won the Cup of Excellence, and grows on land once used for coca production on the eastern slopes of the Cordillera Occidental. The co-op has fewer than 90 members, and farms are typically about nine hectares.

Remember that our most highly-rated coffee was Bolivian, the beautiful Cup of Excellence winner Calama Marka, from Paradise Roasters. We’ve yet to find a coffee that really holds a candle to that, but it seems most Bolivians we try are real winners, as was this one.  It had awesome chocolate tones not only in the French press, but even when brewed in our crappy office pot. The first sips were quite bright, then it settles into a mellow medium-bodied cup, with a lingering sweet candy-like aftertaste.  Can coffee be yummy? This is. 3.5 motmots (one person scored it 4.5!).

Mexico. A light roast, hailing from the ISMAM (Indigenas de la Sierra Madre de Motozintla) co-op in Chiapas, made up of over 1200 Mayan farmers. Average coffee plot size is less than four hectares.  Fair Trade and organic certification has made a huge difference in the lives of farmers in Chiapas, an acutely impoverished region.  The higher prices paid for their beans has paid for schools and other community projects, not to mention boosted personal income. Benefits to the environment include improved soil conditions, as well as protecting the forest, because traditionally coffee in Chiapas is grown under native trees.

Mexican coffees are usually pleasant and enjoyable, and this was typically simple and smooth, with mild caramel and vanilla undertones. While not complex, a couple of us found it evocative, bringing to mind a bright, fresh spring morning filled with soft bird song.  In fact, this is our new gig — to match a bird song to the coffees we review. My immediate response to this was House Wren — but not the energetic full song, but the gentle murmurings of a contended wren rummaging through the fresh spring shrubbery. A perfect breakfast coffee, 3 motmots.

Peru. This was a dark roast from the CACVRA co-op (Cooperativa Agraria Cafetalera Valle Rio Apurimac), grown in the Apurimac River valley. The Apurimac is one of the headwaters of the Amazon, and this is considered the southern zone of coffee growing in Peru. This coffee comes from the co-op’s higher elevation farms, at 1300 to 1800 meters, from mostly small holders (less than five hectares), grown under mixed shade which includes various fruit trees.  I’ve cautioned that even organic Peruvian coffee may lean toward shade monoculture, but farmers in the Apurimac Valley are said to use an average of nine shade tree species on their farms. When Varner visited, he found some farms growing coffee under fruit and cacao trees in typical mixed family plots and others growing under various native tree species.

This coffee illustrated to me my complete transformation from a dark roast lover to a light roast fanatic. A year ago, I would have been crazy about this.  Today, I enjoyed it but my tastes have changed so much that I know I didn’t appreciate it fully. However, the folks who are into darker roasts were enthusiastic. The final tally: 2.75 motmots, higher from dark roast fans.

Higher Ground exemplifies the situation with sustainable coffee today. They are trying to minimize their own impact on the environment; striving to work with a hodgepodge of seals and lack of seals and searching for ways to improve transparency in this system; fostering relationships and understanding at the source; and providing great coffee.

Blends/Multiple / Coffee reviews / Latin America

Coffee review: Coffee Labs Doghouse Blend

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #22.

Coffee Labs Roasters Doghouse Blend, Peru and El Salvador.

Coffee Labs Roasters is a cafe/roaster located in Tarrytown, NY (northwest of White Plains). Owners Mike Love and  Alicia Kelligrew are devoted to sustainable coffee. Dogs, too — they are welcome in the cafe, featured in their logo and name, and honored in their Doghouse Blend, which we review here.

This coffee is certified by both Rainforest Alliance and Smithsonian (SMBC Bird Friendly), and is certified organic and Fair Trade.

Coffee Labs sources Peruvian coffees from La Florida, which comes from the Cooperativa Agraria Cafetalera La Florida, a co-op of over 1000 members in the central Chanchamayo Valley, Junin department. Peru is the second largest producer of organic coffee (after Mexico). While much of Mexico’s organic coffee is grown in rustic shade or traditional polyculture, Peru grows a lot of its organic coffee in commercial polyculture or shade monoculture (definitions here), a less-desirable situation for biodiversity.  Therefore, knowing that La Florida is certified by Smithsonian as Bird-Friendly is reassuring, as their environmental standards are the strictest in the certifying business (see more info after the jump). Also, Peru produces a lot of inexpensive, mediocre organics often used in blends, but Chanchamayos are often considered the best in the country.

The El Salvador portion is from “Santa Rita,” in Sonsonate department of western El Salvador. I believe this is a farm or group of farms, certified by Rainforest Alliance, in the big Las Lajas cooperative.  You can read a lot more about El Salvador coffees in a previous post outlining coffee growing in the country and its importance to birds.

This is a “black and tan” blend — French roasted Peru, medium-dark with oil; and light roasted El Salvador, tan and dry. This was the correct choice for this blend — a dark roast would have overwhelmed the El Salvador’s more delicate flavor. It was a really pleasant cup — even brewed in our neglected office pot through a paper filter (what we consider to be the most punishing circumstances for a coffee being reviewed). We would describe it as subtle rather than complex, but the careful roast of each variety and the just-so proportions of each seems to have harmoniously balanced the flavors; each brought what it should to the cup. Several people independently noted that the flavor stayed consistently stable as it cooled, and even tasted decent cold. It didn’t acquire any funky flavors the way some dark roasts do when they cool.  The Doghouse Blend ended up with 3 motmots.

Coffee Labs does not have online ordering yet, but you can order the Doghouse Blend by email (coffeelabsroasters@mac.com) or phone (914-332-1479) for $12.50/lb. They have quite a variety of organic, Fair Trade, and SMBC Bird-Friendly coffees. Coffee is shipped within 48 hours of roasting.  It’s also available at several Whole Foods Markets near their Tarrytown location, with plans to distribute to the entire Northeast region in the future.

A little further information on Peru:

It’s important to be careful when purchasing Peruvian coffee. Here is an excellent example. At one time there was great bird diversity of rustic shade coffee in Villa Rica, central Peru (in Pasco department, north of Junin), and a Smithsonian survey in 1998 found Cerulean Warblers on these farms. A survey for Cerulean Warblers in these same farms in 2006 found none. Survey leader Gunnar Engblom noted,

“We hardly found any such habitat [rustic shade]. Most that was there 6-8 years ago has been replaced with fast growing Inga and Albizia as shade trees species that carry no epiphytes and less leaf cover. [There is a] strong indication that the coffee boom of shade-grown coffee does not promote the more bird friendly ”song bird coffee” plantations (rustic), but rather promotes more monocultures with Inga and Albizia. It seems that both yield and quality is higher in such conditions and that the market (ultimately the consumers) does not know how to separate between terms such as organic, song bird coffee, shade-grown coffee, etc. We interviewed people at the farms and it is clear that many of those area considered rustic has converted to being mono-cultures today. Maybe this is also the case with other areas north of Villa Rica.”

You can read his full report (PDF) here.

The Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certification requires a minimum shade cover of 40%, and the overstory should include at least ten different species of shade trees, with no more than 70% of the trees being Inga species, which means more habitat remains appropriate for birds.