Let's Talk About Estate Coffees and the Fourth Wave!
It seems in trade journals and newspapers there is a big deal made about estate coffees and the "third wave" coffee movement. There are a lot of claims being tossed about, some of which are misleading at best and outright falsehoods at worst. So, why do producers and roasters love to call their products "estate" coffees and what exactly is that?
I'd like to start with a little story...
When I started in the coffee business over 25 years ago, I bought from 5 estates. Those estates were on the island of Java. They were owned and controlled by the Dutch. Way, way back when sailing ships were the main source of transportation and commerce, the Dutch controlled some of the Indonesian islands and all but one of the Banda Spice Islands, which was the island of Run. This island is a very small island about 1.5 miles long and .5 miles wide - it was jam packed full of nutmeg. This island was controlled by the British. The man that secured it for the British was a man named Nathaniel Courthope. The Dutch were so greedy at this time that they had to have that last island, so they traded it for an island called New Netherlands. Today you may know that island - it's called Manhattan!
Why would I share this with you? Because it's a true story with several facts. I'd like to propose a Fourth Wave of coffee, one based on facts. I like to refer to this wave as, "The Truth About Coffee."
Estate Coffees
So what exactly is an Estate coffee? It is a single farm that is kept pure in itself, bringing the cherry to parchment and most of the time milling the coffee on that farm for shipment. There are exceptions when some of the estates bring their parchment to a central miller. Milling or the graining process is removing the thin brittle shell of parchment from the pit of the coffee cherry, grading it for size through a screening process, then putting the beans in a burlap bag. One bean is half a pit of a coffee cherry. The majority of these large estates come from Guatemala, El Salvador and Panama.
Each acre of coffee trees produces approximately 60 quintales of coffee cherry or about 6000 lbs total (1 quintale = �100 lbs). A coffee cherry yields about 20 percent of its weight in roastable green coffee beans. If you do a simple calculation you realize that one acre of land produces only 1200 pounds of coffee beans per year, that's only 8 - 150 pound sacks!
Now most small farmers have just a few acres. Can you imagine being a little farmer with 7 to 17 acres of land? These little farms make up a good share of what produces the quality coffee we drink in our specialty coffee houses. To be an estate, you need lots of acres. These little farmers are not estates - they simply can't produce enough on the land they own. These farms cannot afford to bring their cherry to parchment. Instead, they cooperatively bring their coffee cherry together with other small farmers so they can process, blend and bag their coffee together. This is called a co-op. A co-op is not an estate.
Fair Trade Coffees
Let's talk about the concept of Fair Trade and TransFair USA's Fair Trade Certification. TransFair USA, a non-profit organization, is the only independent, third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the U.S. and one of 20 members of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO). TransFair USA and the other 19 Fair Trade labeling initiatives attempt to provide third world producers with fair price for their product, which in turn supports community development, sustainable agriculture and improved labor conditions.
Now page 2 of the published 2005 FLO standards states, "Small farmers can join Fairtrade if they have formed organisations (in co-operatives, associations or other organisational forms." This means if you buy Fair Trade coffee, you are buying from a co-op, NOT an ESTATE.
Let's talk about Colombia for a minute. They have a limited estate involvement. The National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia (FNCC) of Juan Valdez fame, has registered shippers which deal with large mills in various areas of the country. Most of the coffee from the Cafeteros (small farms) is brought to these large mills where it is blended. It is very tough in Colombia to isolate individual farms.
Now, remember we're talking about the Fourth Wave here. Also in Colombia there is a group of ladies who lead an organization called Mujeres de Guayata. This organization is a growers association. This association is not a co-op. It is led by women, but not exclusively made up of women. There are men that belong to the association and work there as well. The association sells to a large private exporter. This exporter's name is Espinosa. I commend this group's efforts and goals because they are raising the standard of living for several small farms however this group is NOT an estate, nor is it a co-op, it's an association. They presently don't participate in the Fair Trade program.
Does the island of Sumatra have estates? I don't know of any. I don't believe that there are any large land owners there. It is made up of approximately 40,000 small farmers. All regional gathering of coffee cherry is done by mountain men who pay the small farmers for their cherry and take it to blending centers in Medan. This is very primitive. So, if someone has a Sumatran coffee out there and tells you it's an estate, they don't belong to the Fourth Wave of coffee.
Kenya's system is different. They hold weekly auctions where the coffee from single farms or co-ops in purchased in small lots. These lots can be anywhere from 30 bags to 100 bags or so. Prices can vary widely because of the way the auctions are held.
Q Auctions, the Cup of Excellence and SCAP
"Q" auctions, SCAP (Specialty Coffee Association of Panama) and the COE (Cup of Excellence) are virtual trading platforms much like Ebay online auctions. These online auctions give roasters a convenient "one stop shop" if you will. Third wavers and other roasters are willing to pay more for this convenience, prescreening and guaranteed quality. This saves on air miles, fossil fuels and is good for the environment, but it's hard on someone's ego when they want to tell everyone they are flying all over the world "finding" these expensive coffees. Ultimately, the quality and price of these coffees is determined by cupping.
Cupping can be a controversial and subjective tool. I'd like to quote Tim Castle in the Coffee and Tea Journal from August of 2000, "...is it really fair to judge the effort of the men and women who spent the last year producing a crop, by hand, with one perfunctory slurp and spit?...Is it, perhaps, the height of arrogance to reduce a farm's whole production to a single swirl through the neck of a gaboon? Especially then to hawk (pun intended) 'quality' in our packaging and advertising?"
It is imperative to cup for quality as long as consistency is applied. In my experience there are three uses for cupping. First, the importer or roaster cups a series of new crop coffees, checking for general quality and placement for specific customers. Second, the full time white coat cupper who works for an institutional roaster meeting a specific taste profile. Third, cupping is used as a marketing tool to bloviate.
In almost three decades, I've cupped a ton of coffee and I've never encountered one that tastes like key lime pie, watermelon, champagne, or get this, blackberry cobbler. Some roasters and coffee consultants obviously have too much time on their hands, and this gives them very vivid imaginations. What's amazing is these descriptions can be found in print, and they're not part of the Fourth Wave.
At Longbottom all we can promise you with the Fourth Wave, is the truth. We offer estates. We offer cooperative coffees. We also carry Certified Organic Fair Trade Shade Grown Sustainable Bird Friendly coffees. The simple truth is we offer high quality, fine-cupping coffees that are roasted to your order every day. We don't inventory roasted coffee.
We also don't tell someone we are direct buying coffee which is commonly available to others through the same brokers. I find it interesting when roasters claim to be buying direct from a certain estate when I have that same estate coffee, purchased through a broker, sitting in my warehouse. Do you think this person really went over there and directly bought this coffee?
Is your Roaster an "Importer"?
Let's turn our examination to the process of importing coffee shall we? When you import coffee, you need to fill out a lot of paperwork to satisfy the US Customs and the FDA. Also, you need to secure the funds for the freight itself. When the box arrives in the United States, it's yours. It doesn't matter if it's full of rocks, stumps or dead people - it's yours. There are no guarantees. When you purchase through a broker, quality and delivery are guaranteed. If you don't like it, they will pick it up at no charge and replace it until you do. My broker at times has had to honor this guarantee.
You normally fill a box of coffee for the economics to work out. There are things like piggy backing and other creative ways, but for the most part you have to fill a box. A box or container equates to 37,500 pounds of coffee. That's a lot of coffee! So, are these people really directly importing the coffee? I don't know, maybe they are. If you're an importer, maybe you don't need to fill a box of coffee. Maybe you can put it on an airplane or on somebody's yacht.
Each chop of coffee has its own individual series of numbers that are stenciled on each bag. Those numbers must coincide during FDA and customs inspections. Maybe these third wavers are not only roasting rare unknown coffees from unknown lands, but maybe they're importers too.
Ask yourself does it make economic and ecological sense for a microroaster to use its limited time and resources cruising around the globe importing coffee at great personal risk and expense? Importing coffee is another business in itself. And for the most part, it seems to be all based on volume.
I am just a specialty coffee roaster and I roast approximately 40 containers a year and I am not an importer! I'm a specialty coffee roaster! I receive samples, when the new crops are offered, from many importers that I've had relationships with for over 20 years. I cup them vigorously to assure our customer the highest quality.
So, I concentrate my efforts on cupping, roasting, service and helping independently owned coffee houses grow their business. This is what we have been doing for nearly three decades now. This is not new; this has been going on for a long, long time.
New crop offerings
New crops are offered when the harvesting and processing is done at the first part of the yearly harvest and are ready for shipment. Brazil's new crop starts in August and Colombia's in October. Kenya is harvested twice a year in November and in March. In Ethiopia the new crop starts in February. On the Indonesian Island of Sumatra the new crop starts in November. Most of the Central American countries either start in February or March, with the exception of Panama, which starts in January. So, if you belong to the Fourth Wave of coffee you should never submit a new crop offering when that country's new crops are not available. It's simply impossible to offer all these coffees at the same time but this is happening and it's in print.
Over 25 years ago, Longbottom was one of about 4 roasters in the Portland Metro area. Now it seems that we are one of, shoot, 400 roasters, I don't know. Some of these roasters are months old, some are a year or two old, some are six or seven years old. It would be interesting to know where third wavers get their information and education.
Recently I read in the Oregon Business Journal that a new local roaster "even goes so far as to instruct pickers on when the coffee beans should be picked. Sound pushy? Keep in mind he also pays more for their product than virtually any other coffee buyer." Isn't this interesting? First, you don't pick coffee beans, you pick coffee cherry. Second, this roaster hasn't seen what I pay for coffee. The fact is, these farmers have been cultivating coffee trees and harvesting coffee cherry for generations. Have we reached a point of such hubris that the roaster now knows more about coffee cultivation than the farmer?
I'd like to leave you with a little story. My father boarded the ship REX when he left his home country of Italy in the year 1934. He signed in at Ellis Island, jumped on a train and landed here in Portland, OR. The very next day he started working for the Teresei family in the wholesale food business (fruits and vegetables). I was raised in that business. I've done a few other things in my life other than roasting fine coffee.
Our family had a special permit to produce wine in our home, issued by the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and taxation, now known as the ATF ("F" for firearms). In the United States you had to have a permit like this up until 1965 to produce your own wine. Our family permit was for 170 gallons per year. I still make wine today. I love a good wine. If you're in my home, and I serve you a glass of my wine I can guarantee you it won't taste like key lime or coffee.
I am also a master carpenter, ships carpenter and a licensed Master Mariner. I have delivered ships for people up and down the Pacific Coast. I pretty much know most of the nooks, crannies, holes and ditches that you can take refuge in from Northern Mexico to Southeast Alaska. What I love about the ocean is that it's a truth teller. It doesn't care who you are, how rich you are or how poor you are. It doesn't care if you're a politician or have the media in your back pocket. Most of the people you read about that die on the Pacific Ocean were either too cocky or didn't have the experience. I welcome this third wave of coffee roasters because they bring excitement and change. Just tone down the hype and join the Fourth Wave.