A farmer in the Dukundekawa Cooperative in Ruli, Rwanda, in the Gakenke District. Courtesy of Three Keys Coffee.

Although the term “fair trade” has been in use for over 75 years, it is not linked to one specific group or organization. Conceptually, fair trade is a global movement that includes producers, consumers, various nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations, and for-profit businesses; it is a system designed to build a more equitable trading model for a range of products, including coffee. In 1973, the first fair-trade-identified coffee was purchased from smallholder farms in Guatemala by a Dutch organization called Fair Trade Original. By 1988, a new fair trade label, Max Havelaar, was established in the Netherlands. The name came from the protagonist in the 1860 novel Max Havelaar, who opposed the exploitation of coffee workers in Dutch colonies. The character fought against the corrupt Indonesian government on the island of Java, which was a Dutch colony at the time.

In 1997, Fairtrade International (originally the Fairtrade Labeling Organization) was established to unite the fragmented fair trade movement behind a common set of standards. A separate organization called FLOCERT, established in 2003 in Germany, uses Fairtrade International’s standards to certify the production process and audit the sales of products. In 1998, Fair Trade USA (known at the time as TransFair USA) was founded and worked in collaboration with Fairtrade International for 13 years as one of 19 national member organizations. In 2012, Fair Trade USA decided to separate from Fairtrade International, which allowed the organization to make its own rules.

The fair trade system is designed to help farmers gain access to a “fair” or economically sustainable price for their products. Coffee Review last reported on fair trade-certified coffees in November 2015. In the eight years since, we have continued to see an evolution of the coffee industry, bringing higher-quality specialty coffee to a broader range of coffee drinkers. Fair trade-certified coffee is intrinsically bound to this expansion. As this report demonstrates, we see a mirroring of everything that is happening in the wider coffee market within the fair trade segment.

This month, we considered nearly 40 coffees that passed through a fair trade certification process in one of many possible pathways and selected 11 coffees for review. Some of these are the highest-scoring among those we cupped, while others are supermarket brands that scored lower but are familiar to many.

Ethiopia: A Fair Trade Powerhouse

The assortment of fair trade-certified coffees we evaluated this month, like the specialty coffee market as a whole, expressed a range of origins, flavor attributes and roast levels. The good news is that if you look for them, you can find outstanding fair trade-certified coffees, such as the complex and well-balanced 92-point Ethiopia Sidama Boa Bedegelo from Orange, Massachusetts-based roaster Dean’s Beans. The package bears the seal of the Fair Trade Federation, which is a trade association of fair trade enterprises committed to equitable and sustainable trading partnerships. Dean’s Beans’ roastmaster and green coffee buyer, Brendan Walsh, says, “We’ve been committed to fair trade since Dean founded the company in 1993. As we see it, fair trade certification is a much-needed aid to millions of small-scale farmers around the world.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, four of the fair trade coffees reviewed for this month’s report are from Ethiopia, an origin known for its massive fair trade-certified cooperatives, a diverse range of indigenous heirloom coffee varieties, and expressive, often floral-toned flavor profiles. Another 92-point Ethiopia coffee, Gerbicho Lela, with sweet citrus and a tea rose-like floral quality, was submitted by Noble Coffee Roasting in Ashland, Oregon.

The Complexity of Certification

Here’s where the fair trade story becomes more complicated. Although this Gerbicho Lela was produced by members of the fair trade-certified producers’ cooperative of the same name, Noble does not maintain fair trade certification and therefore cannot display a fair trade seal on its bags. There are a number of reasons a roaster might choose not to hold fair trade certification, including administrative hurdles and costs. Still, Noble Coffee founder and CEO Jared Rennie says his company “supports the work that the fair trade movement has done at origin and the many real improvements in the quality of life of millions of people since the movement began decades ago.” He adds, “We buy a lot of coffee from fair trade-certified cooperatives all over the world, and we are big proponents of the principles that guide these cooperatives.”

There were a handful of other roasters who sent in coffee for this month’s report who, like Noble, purchased fair trade-certified coffee and supported the principles of the movement without themselves becoming a certified link in the supply chain. Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Red Rock Roasters, on the other hand, has been certified by Fair Trade USA since the early 2000s. Red Rock’s 90-point natural-processed Organic/Fair Trade Ethiopia Sidamo showed flavors of strawberry, honey-roasted nuts and dessert wine. This coffee was produced by the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, and with both roaster and cooperative certification, the entire supply chain is transparently fair trade.

Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Red Rock Roasters is a fair trade-certified roaster. Courtesy of Red Rock Roasters.

Diversity of Fair Trade Origins

In addition to Ethiopia, we received entries from a variety of coffee-producing countries, including a solid 91-point submission from Rwanda roasted by Three Keys Coffee in Houston, Texas. This lively, fruit- and spice-toned Rwanda Reverb was produced by Rambagirakawa, an all-women subgroup of the Dukundekawa Cooperative. Although at the time of review, Three Keys did not hold fair trade certification, CEO Kenzel Fallen says that after years of sourcing fair trade coffee, the company just signed final certification documentation with Fairtrade America. Previously, she says, Three Keys was “of the mindset that because we knew the prices paid were well beyond fair trade minimums, we didn’t need to pay for a seal to prove that. However, many customers ask and look for a label for verification, so we decided this year to pursue formal certification because we want to take a more public stance to affirm our commitment and reassure our customers.” This notion of trusting the roaster seems to be a common sentiment where specialty roasters are concerned. Consumers can read about the coffee and make assessments based on price, but the addition of a fair trade seal supports a roaster’s message via an objective third-party verification system.

Three Keys Coffee Reverb is a fair trade-certified coffee from Rwanda. Courtesy of Three Keys.

From Latin America, the 91-point Guatemala Tojquia, roasted by Wonderstate Coffee in Viroqua, Wisconsin, is a single-producer lot that exhibits flavors of star anise and caramel. The farmer who produced the coffee is a member of a fair trade-certified co-op, and this lot was purchased under fair trade terms. The roastery, however, is not fair trade-certified, so you will not find a fair trade symbol on the bag. Wonderstate co-founder Caleb Nicholes says, “We have developed our own minimum price for all of our coffees … and have committed to increasing our minimum by 5 cents each year to cover rising costs of production.”

Homer Alarcon is the producer of Amavida’s Peru Gesha Natural. Courtesy of Amavida.

Like Wonderstate, Santa Rosa Beach, Florida-based Amavida Coffee does not maintain fair trade certification, but its berry jam and sugar-sweet 91-point Peru Gesha Natural was also produced by a single farmer who is a member of a large fair trade-certified cooperative. Not only are these coffees delicious, but they are examples of fair trade-certified coffees from a diverse range of producing countries.

Porfirio Velasquez is the producer of Wonderstate Coffee’s Guatemala Tojquia, from the Huehuetenango region. Courtesy of Wonderstate.

Speaking of diversity, we evaluated a small number of fair trade coffees from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, another home for large fair trade-certified cooperatives. One of those lots rose above the rest, the deep-toned, accessible and subtly savory Sumatra Highlands coffee from Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Colectivo Coffee (reviewed at 87 points). This coffee was grown in the Gayo Highlands on the northern tip of Sumatra in the Aceh Province by the coffee farmers’ co-op Kopepi Ketiara, and Colectivo’s website displays the Fair Trade USA seal.

A more unusual entry was the 92-point Kenya Endebess from Seattle, Washington-based Fulcrum Coffee Roasters. Famous for its washed-process coffees, Kenya produces very few coffees dried in the whole fruit. This coffee was produced by members of the Othaya Farmers Cooperative Society Limited. Again, with this coffee, the co-op holds fair trade certification but the roaster does not. These coffees round out the geographic circle of fair trade origins and further demonstrate the tremendous range of flavors that can be found within the fair trade subcategory of specialty coffee.

Women farmers of the Koperasi Ketiara Cooperative in the Gayo Highlands of Sumatra, Indonesia.

Fair Trade and National Chain Markets

Once a niche product found only in select natural food stores, fair trade coffee is now widely available to shoppers online and in traditional grocery stores and supermarkets, particularly in North America and Europe. We would be remiss to ignore the assortment of fair trade coffees that can be found at some of these large national grocery chains. Those who seek fair trade-certified coffee in grocery and big box stores are typically presented with a small collection of often darker-roasted options. Just as with non-certified coffees, it is more challenging to find lighter-roasted single-origin fair trade options. Although these next three coffees do not dazzle in the way that some of the previous samples do, they are serviceable choices that many coffee drinkers will certainly appreciate.

We start with a pair of house brands that can easily be found at the ubiquitous Whole Foods Market. Allegro Coffee, the Thornton, Colorado-based specialty coffee subsidiary of Whole Foods, roasted the crisply chocolaty 85-point Colombia El Premio de Timana. Another Whole Foods entry comes from the company’s 365 house brand, the simple but softly sweet 82-point Hometown Blend. Curiously, this is one of just a few blends that came across our cupping table, yet it was an example of an easy-drinking, value-forward fair trade-certified coffee among other blends that were so darkly roasted that nothing but charred flavors remained in the cup. Both of these widely available coffees were purchased at the Whole Foods Market in Oakland, California, and are likely available in many other locations. In neighboring Alameda, California, we purchased a couple of fair trade coffees from Trader Joe’s, including the house brand’s Organic Fair Trade Shade Grown Ethiopian, which we rated 83. Although lacking specific origin details, this staunchly dark-roasted coffee yields soft hints of dried fruit, along with more pronounced flavors of lightly smoky walnut and carob.

All three of these coffees displayed the Fair Trade USA logo as proof of certification. Still, in addition to certification, the retail price is often one of the only guideposts consumers have for determining that a fair price was paid by the roaster. When a 12-ounce package of coffee is sold for a paltry $9.99 (in this case, the aforementioned Trader Joe’s Ethiopia), even with a fair trade seal, the price calls into question the possible compensation received by the people who grew the coffee.

Recent Fair Trade News

On Aug. 1, 2023, Fairtrade International implemented a change to its pricing guidelines for coffee. For the first time in a dozen years, the floor price and organic premium for fair trade-certified coffees were increased. With the cost of living gradually escalating year over year, and the more recent global inflationary spike we all have been witnessing, there are some who argue that this increase is very late in coming. It is, however, a sudden and significant increase in the cost of goods that surprised many fair trade roasters and importers.

For washed Arabica coffee, the baseline price will increase by 29 percent, with an additional 33 percent increase for the organic premium. There is also a more modest but still significant 19 percent increase for lower-valued Robusta coffees. What does this boil down to in dollars and cents? For fair trade and organic-certified washed Arabica coffee, the floor price has gone up from $1.70 USD per pound of green coffee to $2.20, with an additional 20 cents per pound social premium provided to the cooperative to be spent in whatever way the organization decides. This new $2.40 base price for fair trade- and organic-certified Arabica coffee is for free on board (FOB) terms, which excludes costs associated with insurance, storage, transportation, importer margin, interest and certification fees.

For context, over the past five years, the price for commercial (non-specialty) Arabica coffee traded on the volatile New York Board of Trade commodities market has fluctuated dramatically between $0.87 and $2.55 per pound. No matter how low the commodity market drops, fair trade-certified growers are guaranteed a minimum price that is intended to cover the cost of production. During periods of high commodities pricing, fair trade prices typically increase due to supply and demand dynamics from within and outside of the fair trade system.

Disagreement Among Fair Trade-Certifying Bodies

To complicate matters, the changes Fairtrade International has put into place were not accepted by Fair Trade USA, the primary certifying agency in the United States. After conferring with stakeholders, Fair Trade USA decided not to implement the price increase at least through the end of 2023. Originally, Fair Trade USA had voluntarily chosen to accept Fairtrade International’s price structure, but now the organizations are diverging. Fair Trade USA’s founder, Paul Rice, says, “A significant increase in Fair Trade price and premium at this time would severely reduce demand and ultimately hurt the very farmers and families that we aim to serve.” The two organizations continue to share a common goal of empowering farmers and enabling them to develop sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their communities.

Coffee drying in the sun on concrete patios at the Dukundekawa Cooperative in Ruli, Rwanda, in the Gakenke District.

Although deciphering fair trade programs is becoming more nuanced, buying certified coffee is still a way to support a movement that helps farmers achieve sustainability in business. One of the fair trade movement’s greatest challenges has been to increase demand for certified coffees. Currently, many of the 900,000 FLOCERT-certified coffee farmers located in 31 different countries sell only a portion of their produce under fair trade terms. The remainder is sold into the market at prevailing prices, which sometimes fall below the cost of production. Choosing to buy coffee from a roaster that pays more to the grower, whether through the fair trade system or not, is one way to ensure coffee farmers are getting a fair shake.

If the price of coffee in your grocery store or online is extremely low, you can be sure the farmer did not receive a living wage for their labor and expertise. As we can see from the majority of coffees reviewed this month, high-quality coffee demands higher prices, whether the roaster is certified under the fair trade system or not. Not all coffees, however, even certified coffees, have corresponding prices that indicate fair compensation for the producer. Consumers who care that the people who produce coffee are getting a fair price need to do their homework. If the price of a fair trade coffee seems low, don’t be afraid to ask the roaster for more details.

The post The Evolution of “Fair Trade” Coffee appeared first on Coffee Review.

We structured this report to consider not only coffees literally roasted by women on the production line, but also coffees that were sourced by women who are green buyers, and others that were roast-profiled by women who manage roasting operations.

We received 110 samples for this report, a record-breaking number in the context of Coffee Review’s 21 years of monthly reports. And the overall quality was exceptionally high: 55 of these coffees earned scores of 90 or higher. The only downside to this remarkable statistic is that we can only report on the top 17, those coffees that scored 93 and above.

Why Focus on Gender?

Before we consider these coffees, an important question: Why does it matter that the roasters of these exceptional coffees are women? At Coffee Review, we cup hundreds of coffees every month, identified only by number, and our impartial sensory evaluation of each coffee depends on our not knowing where it was grown, who roasted it, or the appearance of the beans or the packaging. All of these factors have the potential to influence our judgment of a coffee, and blind cupping allows us to focus on the inherent qualities of the cup. But then, when the ratings and sensory descriptions have been established, we get curious about the details of each coffee—in this case, about the roaster, in particular, who made a significant contribution to the end product.

Production roaster Grace McCutchan at Red Roaster Coffee Roaster. Photo by Jessica Messer.

In 2016, 40 competitors entered the U.S. Roaster Championships, sponsored by the Specialty Coffee Association; they were all men. Jen Apodaca, who was on the events committee of the U.S. Roasters Guild (now part of the Coffee Roasters Guild, having just merged with the Roaster Guild of Europe to form one body) spearheaded the hashtag #shestheroaster movement to emphasize the gender gap in the profession and to encourage diversity, initially by way of social media. Two years and 2,147 Instagram posts (and counting) later, images of women (along with transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming) roasters have flooded the Internet. Then Apodaca, along with roasters Joanna Alm, Taylor Browne and Caitlin McCarthy-Garcia, formed a non-profit organization, called She’s the Roaster to, as Apodaca says, “go beyond the hashtag and create scholarships and events for womxn [sic] to become roasters and network in the industry.”

Amy Miller, co-owner of, and green buyer for, Argyle Coffee Roasters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with her newborn son, Charlie. Courtesy of Argyle Coffee.

Just one year after this flurry of outreach, Taylor Gresham, head roaster at Evocation Coffee in Amarillo, Texas, took third place as one of six women roasters who competed at the subsequent U.S. Roaster Championships. The simple, profound gesture of #shestheroaster has done more than simply get women roasters entered into competitions. It has also fostered community, mentoring relationships and professional access, and most importantly, it has put the industry on notice that women are here to stay, even in the historically male-dominated field of roasting.

Rachel Moreshead, head roaster for Bluebeard Coffee in Tacoma, Washington. Courtesy of Rachel Moreshead.

Meanwhile, everyone wins, coffee-lovers and industry folks, alike. Craig Holt, founder of Atlas Imports and a longtime advocate of gender equality in coffee, said on a panel about women in coffee at the 2017 Specialty Coffee Association Expo: “It’s fairly apparent that, wherever women appear in the supply chain, quality is improved.” He made this remark casually, as if it were a given, and it’s a clear rationale for the work he’s done at origin, and as an importer, to support gender justice. It also carries the weight of personal narrative, expert opinion, and lived experience.

Mandy Spirito, who’s worked in the industry for 10 years (and identifies a non-binary femme), says, in a story that first appeared in Roast Magazine (now archived on Royal Coffee’s blog), that when she tried to break into roasting when the coffee shop she worked for needed another roaster on the production line, the owners said Spirito was “too small,” at 5’2″ and “weighed less than a bag of coffee.” They said they “needed someone stronger.” When Spirito moved to San Francisco, women-identified members of the roasting community, many of whom had encountered similar roadblocks, embraced her fully. She is now Director of Coffee at Halfwit Roasters in Chicago.

Given what we know about the gender gap in terms of pay and representation across all industries, globally, it’s not shocking that women would be underrepresented in the professionals of coffee roasting and sourcing. What is a bit surprising is how few of the roasters we feature in this report addressed that question directly when we interviewed them. Most opted to skip our question regarding barriers to achievement—why is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it’s difficult to gauge, from the perspective of present success, what one overcame to beat the unpredictable odds one encountered along the way.

Hula Daddy Kona Coffee’s head roaster, Laura Ross. Courtesy of Hula Daddy.

Jennifer Gallegos, currently the vice-president of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA), who has devoted her career to advancing the cause of women throughout the global coffee supply chain, surmises that, “While most women absolutely recognize the challenges they face, they can best address them by mastering their craft—by identifying, procuring, roasting, and bringing to market the best coffee available.” So, instead of politicizing their work as individuals, she says, “They just do the right thing and work hard to develop quality coffees from sustainable sources. That’s powerful. Not only because better coffee creates more fans, but also because great coffee coming from diverse supply chains creates long-lasting effects.”

Unsuspecting Pioneers

Several of the top-rated coffees in this report came to us by way of women who have worked in the coffee industry for more than a decade. The coffee that earned the highest rating, Bird Rock Coffee Roasters’ Colombia Finca La Maria Geisha (95), was overseen by Maritza Suarez-Taylor, director of quality control for both Bird Rock and PT’s Coffee Roasters. (A PT’s Sumatra Tano Batak appears in this month’s reviews at 94).

Maritza Suarez-Taylor, of both PT’s and Bird Rock, picking Pacamara cherries in El Salvador. Courtesy of Maritza Suarez-Taylor.

Though Suarez-Taylor might not have consciously set out to be a coffee pioneer when she got her start in the industry in her home country of Colombia nearly 20 years ago, in fact, she is. She jokes that her modest height and tall cupping tables have been her biggest challenge, but she was also told, in the early days of her career, that the coffee business was not for women and certainly not for women who don’t speak English. Suarez-Taylor is now fluent in English, is a three-time re-certified Q-grader, a former Q instructor, and an expert green-buyer. This natural-processed Geisha from Finca La Maria is richly fruit-forward, with notes of bergamot and nougat as ballast. She works closely with Lara Prahm, who made her way up in PT’s Coffee Roasters from packaging assistant to lead production roaster in four years. Prahm skillfully roasted the aforementioned PT’s Sumatra Tano Batak on a 25-kilogram Diedrich machine to develop its deeply sweet florals and delicate earth tones.

Beth Beall, co-owner of both Texas Coffee Traders and Montana Coffee Traders, submitted a honey-processed Costa Rica (93) roasted at the Whitefish, Montana shop. This Costa Rica was grown near the Monteverde Cloud Forest, where Beall co-owns shares in a number of small farms with 12 other families. This is a lush, dried fruit- and chocolate-toned coffee that she helped bring to fruition, literally, from seed to cup. Beall credits her mother for her approach to her career, which boils down to a strong work ethic and general positivity. Regarding challenges, she says, “I think most women in the world are aware of, influenced by or hindered by gender bias in some way. The #metoo movement has created a platform for women to speak out and share stories of bias, abuse, road blocks and prejudice. The challenge is how to affect real change.”

Beth Beall, co-owner of Texas Coffee Traders, turns coffee drying on raised beds at the Cafe de Monteverde farm in Costa Rica. Courtesy of Texas Coffee Traders.

At Beall’s Coffee Traders branches, her goal is to “create a culture of no limits.” She says that, “By encouraging women to excel, speak up and participate in our workplace, we set our own pattern for how we treat each other and how we grow.” It’s likely not a coincidence that another talented woman, Alison Chopp, is Montana Coffee Traders’ head roaster, green buyer and trainer.

Flight Coffee, based in New Hampshire, was founded in 2011 by Claudia Barrett, who has worked in coffee in various capacities since 1993. Flight’s Sumatra Tano Batak (94) is a crisply sweet, spice-toned coffee with an inviting hint of pipe tobacco. Flight’s logo is a rocket ship, and flight is an important trope for Barrett, as she experiences her work in coffee as a “vertical trajectory,” fueled, as she says, “by a passion for coffee, science and fun.”

Owner of Flight Coffee in Bedford, New Hampshire, Claudia Barrett. Courtesy of Claudia Barrett.

The head roaster for Bluebeard Coffee in Tacoma, Washington, Rachel Moreshead has experienced almost every role in retail coffee: barista, café owner, production assistant, retail manager, and now roaster. She recently seized an opportunity to return to the industry, having taken time away after the birth of her daughter. For her, roasting is “a mashup of science, history, intuition, and bravery.” Her non-linear path is a common story among women who are also parents. The wet-process Ethiopia Gedeb we review here is resonant and balanced, redolent with spicy florals, maple syrup and apricot.

Gayla Moore, founder of Moore Coffee in Ventura, California, has been in the coffee business since 1990. She now serves as green buyer, quality control manager and roaster, and the Kenya Peaberry Nyeri Gatugi we review here at 94 will appeal especially to consumers who enjoy a slightly darker-roasted Kenya cup. Moore says, “This Kenya is very fruity and floral. I find African coffees like a high roasting temperature, so I hold them until the end of my roasting day when the roaster has been on for a long time. I let the aroma guide me as this coffee develops. If I listen, smell and watch, I know just when to drop.”

Finally, Equator Coffee and Tea’s Yemen (94) is an intensely sweet-savory coffee roasted to the darker edge of medium, with paprika-like spice notes and hints of rich pipe tobacco. While the company doesn’t currently have any production roasters on staff who are women, Equator was founded by Brooke McDonnell and Helen Russell in Mill Valley, California in 1995, when it was somewhat renegade for two women to found a coffee-roasting business. Equator has grown into one of the Bay Area’s leading roasters.

Two Standout Roasters in Taiwan

Two submissions from Taiwan each scored 94. Caffe Douceur’s richly sweet, berry-toned Kenya AA Top Gura, was roasted by Carrie Chang at her shop in Tainan, where she’s also green buyer and head of quality control. Chang’s career in coffee began 14 years ago with her first job at Starbuck’s. She co-founded Caffe Douceur in 2006.

Carrie Chang, green buyer, quality control cupper, and second roaster at Café Douceur in Tainan, Taiwan. Courtesy of Cafe Douceur.

Chin-Ying Yang, of Roasters Note in Changhua County, Taiwan, who has been in the coffee industry for 12 years, roasted an elegant washed-processed Guji we enjoyed for its bright, fruit-forward cup with juicy acidity.

Chin-Ying Yang at the roastery she co-owns, Roasters Note, in Changhua County, Taiwan. Courtesy of Roasters Note.

When the Old Guard Is Also the New Wave

Rusty’s Hawaiian and Hula Daddy Kona Coffee, both growers and roasters on the Big Island of Hawaii, are coffee pioneers by any standard. For years, both have experimented with tree variety and processing variations intended to push the envelope on aroma and flavor.

Lorie Obra, co-founder with her late husband, Rusty, of Rusty’s Hawaiian in the relatively new coffee region of Ka’u (southeast of Kona), sent us the 93-rated Ka’u Oro Yeast Typica, a blend of two nanolots: a Typica processed by the “double-washed” Kenya method and a Typica with a specialized yeast, Lalcafé Oro, applied during the fermentation step of the wet process. The result is an impressive, sweetly herb-toned cup, with a wide and original range of aroma and flavor notes. The yeast experiments were conducted by Obra’s daughter, Joan Obra Gaston.

Rusty’s Hawaiian owner Lorie Obra sorting cherries from her Ka’u, Hawaii farm. Photo by Carlin Ma.

The one and only roaster at Hula Daddy Kona Coffee, in Holualoa, on the slopes of Hualalai volcano, is Laura Ross, who walked away from a hotel career in 2010 to work at the farm and roastery as a tour guide, where she cupped coffee every day. When owners Karen and Lee Paterson observed the sensory skills Ross had developed, they asked her to train with their current roaster at the time, Miguel Meza (now of Paradise Roasters, also featured in this report). Ross’ submission, a Red Bourbon named “Karen J,” (94) after one of the co-owners, impressed us with its subtle complexity and evocation of jasmine and, amazingly, pineapple (amazing because pineapple is a quintessential Hawaiian fruit).

Young Entrepeneurs Forge New Paths

Mariana Faerron has lived in the U.S. for eight years, but she worked with coffee farmers in her home country of Costa Rica when she was a university student and later as a micro-lender. Faerron studied Agricultural Economy, and her values are firmly rooted in the goal of sustainability, so her Campbell, California-based company, Tico Coffee Roasters, trades largely in organic-certified and other sustainable coffees. A case in point is the washed-process Ethiopia Gedeb Gotiti (93) she purchased from METAD farm and mill, known for its production of high-quality traditional Ethiopia coffees, as well as a commitment to community. The cup is high-toned and sweet, invoking mango, honey and narcissus.

Mariana Faerron, co-owner of Tico Coffee Roasters in Campbell, California, at the cupping table. Courtesy of Mariana Faerron.

Argyle Coffee Roasters, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was founded four years ago by Amy Miller and her husband, Manny, who is from Costa Rica. From the time their son was five-weeks-old, Miller has been carrying him around the shop while she multi-tasks. Argyle’s fruit-forward natural-processed Ethiopia with notes of raspberry and chocolate fudge impressed us at a rating of 93.

Ingin Kim, owner and roaster of Peri Coffee in Ventura, California, sample-roasting on a Coffee Discovery roaster. Photo by Karen Yin.

Ingin Kim, of Peri Coffee in Altadena, California, is a veritable one-woman show. She makes all the sourcing decisions, determines roast profiles on her Loring Kestral, manages quality control, packages, and ships. Her Ethiopia Guji Allona Natural (93) evokes fresh blueberries and roasted cacao nib. Kim says, “My journey into coffee began in 2011, when my sisters, mother and I had an opportunity to invest in Ninety Plus Gesha Estates in Panama. Having access to some of the best coffees in the world from Ethiopia and Panama, I naturally wanted to delve deeper by learning to roast, getting certified as a Q-grader, and starting my own micro-roasting operation. Today, I supply coffee to several local (mostly women-owned) small businesses.”

Learning the Craft In Good Hands

Grace McCutchan has been working in specialty coffee for seven years, having turned her focus to roasting under the guidance of Red Rooster Coffee Roaster’s head roaster, Tony Greatorex. This Floyd, Virginia roastery is a small-town success story, and an example of the strength of family ties. McCutchan is the sister of co-owner Rose McCutchan, and she is responsible for the production-roasting of the natural-processed Red Rooster Ethiopia Worka we review here at 93. She says this coffee provided an “ah-ha” moment for her when she first approached it on the cupping table: “It was unique in my experience of coffee, so delicious, and it tied in with all that I value about the history of Ethiopian coffee.”

Khanh Trang, co-owner of Greater Goods Coffee Roasters in Austin, Texas, sourced the Kenya Ndunduri coffee we rated 93 for its balance and engaging notes of butterscotch and black currant. Trang highlighted the flavor notes she wanted emphasized in the cup, relying on roaster Sara Gibson to develop them in the roaster. Gibson has only been roasting for two years, having found her way to Austin and Greater Goods via San Francisco, where she took a class with queer/transgender coffee activist Dani Goot, then at Bay Area CoRoasters, a career-changing experience that gave her the confidence to leave her job as a digital content manager and dive into coffee full-time, apprenticing with Greater Goods’ other co-owner, Trey Cobb, at the roastery.

Sara Gibson, production roaster at Greater Goods Roasting in Austin, Texas. Courtesy of Sara Gibson.

Nuancing this Kenya was challenging. Gibson says she “decided not to go too light because we wanted to bring out the deep fruity acidity and juiciness in this coffee. But we didn’t want to go too far into savory territory at the other end, so it was a delicate balance.”

Production roaster for Paradise Roasters in Ramsey, Minnesota, Samantha LaTendre. Courtesy of Samantha La Tendre.

Paradise Roasters, based in Ramsey, Minnesota, is an innovative roasting company specializing in microlot Arabica and Robusta coffees from Asia and other emerging origins. Production roaster Sam LeTendre submitted a beautiful, very limited-production Ecuador Typica (93), that she roasted at a higher-than-usual charge temperature to emphasize the coffee’s bright fruit and crisp floral notes. LeTendre has only been roasting for a little over a year and is honing her craft with guidance from co-owner Miguel Meza.

The post Women in Coffee: Why It Matters That “She’s the Roaster” appeared first on Coffee Review.

The organic movement is fueled in large part by consumers’ health concerns. People are understandably wary of consuming agricultural poisons along with their fruits and vegetables. With coffee, however, the health issue is less persuasive than it is with many other agricultural products: apples or strawberries, for example, which we consume whole and often raw. We do not consume the fruit of the coffee tree. Instead, we strip the fruit off and compost it, retaining only the seed, which we then dry, roast at very high temperatures, grind, and soak in hot water. Subsequently we throw away the dried, roasted, ground seeds and drink the water.

No study we have seen links prepared or brewed coffee, including espresso, with significant levels of contaminants. Typical is a 2008 Australian study which meticulously tested a wide range of coffee beverages purchased randomly in the Australian food service market and found that “there were no detectable levels in any of the coffee [beverages] sampled. This included all 98 pesticide residues, 18 PAHs, beryllium, mercury and ochratoxin A.” The key findings summary concluded that “The overall levels of chemical contaminants identified in this survey are generally considered to be low and are consistent with those reported in other comparable surveys both in Australia and overseas.”

Coffee cherries being harvested in the Yirgacheffe growing region of southern Ethiopia.

Nevertheless, pesticides and herbicides are widely used, sometimes abused, in the coffee fields of the world. Many consumers seek organically grown coffees out of concern for the health of the earth itself and those who live on it. According to a report from Technavio Research, the Compound Annual Growth Rated (CAGR) for organic coffee is expected to increase by 13% between now and 2021. This research attributes this projected growth, in part, to millennials, who, as a demographic, are said to be concerned with the environment and a healthy lifestyle, and to have a willingness to spend money for specialty or niche products like organic coffee. So it appears that, while the driving force behind the demand for organic coffee may be changing from health concerns to environmental concerns, the demand itself is on the rise. According to a World of Organic Agriculture 2016 report quoted by ecologist Julie Craves, coffee is the world’s largest single organic crop.

11 Top-Scorers from Ethiopia

Although the largest volume of organically grown coffee is produced in Latin America, particularly in Peru and Mexico, Africa also produces significant volumes. We have tested and enjoyed many engaging and distinctive organically grown coffees from Africa over the past couple of years, hence the subject of this report. Our hope was that we would source a range of organically certified coffees from several producing countries on the African continent.

It did not turn out that way. Out of 70 samples submitted, 56 were from one country—Ethiopia. Furthermore, of the 11 coffees rated 92 or higher and reviewed here, all were produced in Ethiopia.

In retrospect, the dominating presence of Ethiopia should have come as no surprise. Ethiopia usually vies with Mexico as the world’s second-largest producer of certified organic coffees, after Peru. And, certifications aside, almost all of Ethiopia’s coffee is farmed without synthetic inputs of any kind, largely because farmers can’t afford them. A study done in 2014 by the International Coffee Organization estimated that 95% of Ethiopia’s coffee is de facto organically grown. Nevertheless, only 10% of that coffee is eligible for organic certification because the rest is not fully traceable back to the cooperative or farm where it was produced.

Members of the Homacho Waeno Cooperative harvest coffee. Courtesy of Sustainable Harvest.

Many roasters queried us to ask if they could submit coffees they felt confident were farmed without use of synthetic inputs because of their familiarity with the producers. Nevertheless, for this report, we concluded that we needed to stick to reviewing coffees that consumers could be assured were produced under organic conditions using organic protocols. We went so far as to check the organic documentation at the farm level provided by importers for all the coffees we review here.

Finally, the timing of this report perhaps favored coffees produced north of the equator, where the main coffee harvest takes place earlier in the year, rather than south of the equator, in countries like Tanzania and Uganda, where the harvest starts near the end of the year. When choosing the optimum time to organize a tasting report, we often struggle at Coffee Review with these sorts of timing trade-offs.

One Country, Plenty of Options

Although only one producing country is represented in this month’s reviews, the range of coffees styles and pleasures these reviews describe is wide and engaging. Consumers seeking an exceptional cup carrying the reassurance of a third-party-verified certification will find a wide range of sensory options here, all distinctive and all deeply attractive.

Ethiopia coffees, whether certified organic or not, are produced from tree varieties native to Ethiopia and grown virtually nowhere else. These varieties tend to produce coffees with typically striking cup character: bright, lively and balanced in structure and intricately engaging in aroma and flavor. Furthermore, the best mills in Ethiopia are also ingenious and meticulous in their processing methods. Classic wet-processed or “washed” Ethiopia coffees (in which fruit skin and pulp are removed before drying) tend to highlight floral and citrus notes, while “natural”-processed Ethiopias (beans are dried inside the fruit rather than after the fruit has been removed) lean toward lusher fruit and deeper flowers. Fine examples of organic coffees prepared by both processing methods appear in this month’s reviews.

Of the 14 samples we received of organic-certified coffees produced in Africa origins outside Ethiopia, nine were from the Democratic Republic of Congo and two were from Uganda. Kenya, Burundi and Rwanda contributed one sample each. These 14 coffees ranged in scored from 84-91, with five scoring 90 or above, a good showing, and encouragement for those who may want to consider buying organic coffees from these origins. The vast Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which contributed nine samples, has established itself as a source of fine specialty coffee through the development of the SOPACDI cooperative in the far eastern part of the DRC, just across Lake Kivu from Rwanda. This rapidly growing cooperative now has 5,600 members and is apparently succeeding its goal to help heal wounds left by the latest in eastern Congo’s seemingly endless string of horrific civil wars. The cooperative’s coffees typically carry both organic and Fair Trade certification and can be quite attractive in the style of the pungently spicy, sweet-savory coffees that often come out of the African Great Lakes region.

How Does Organic Certification Look to Roasters?

One of the more interesting themes to surface during our testing and interviewing for this report was the relationship of roasters to the certified organic market. These relationships turned out to be more complex than we expected.

Organic certification at the farm level is overseen by various regional agencies, but, unlike sellers of organic vegetables, who don’t need further certification to sell organic produce, coffee roasters must also be certified in order to legally sell coffee that is labeled “organic.” Roasters must supply the certifying agency (different in each state) with certification paperwork from the farm and importer, as well as undergo annual inspection to ensure that organic coffees are handled in areas separate from non-organic, in much the way Kosher food is certified. This process involves both a one-time application fee and an annual inspection fee, fees that many small-scale roasters complain they cannot afford.

The obvious question arises, then: How important is organic certification to the roaster? We received almost as many answers as the number of roasters we interviewed.

The Bag and the Coffee Inside

Approaches ranged from commitment to organic as a core value in a business model to mere coincidence or afterthought. Furthermore, several of the top-scoring coffees came from roasters who don’t label their coffees as organic, even when these coffees are farmed organically. The reason? They don’t have USDA certification as organic roasters, making it illegal for them to do so.

Reunion Island lists the organic certifier at the farm level on their retail bags. Courtesy of Reunion Island.

The top-rated Reunion Island Sidama (94) is Fair Trade as well as organic-certified. Anne Wiseman, marketing coordinator for Reunion Island, says that it’s important for the company to offer organic-certified coffees, and that their organic selection is growing with consumer demand. Reunion Island has committed to carry this same organically-certified Sidama, from the same importer and producers, on an ongoing basis.

Randy Lint, of Big Creek Coffee Roasters in Hamilton, Montana sent us an Ethiopia Gedeb Halo Beriti (94) that is certified organic at origin, but is not labeled organic. While Lint has been a certified organic handler in the past, he has found the cumbersome process of certifying his roastery not worth the cost, though he is still committed to the associated practices. He says his local customers trust his sourcing, and his business is successful without offering the added reassurance of certification. Nevertheless, Lint acknowledges that this might change as his roastery grows.

Revel Coffee’s Gary Thiesen has a similar perspective. For him, cup quality is more important than certification, though he was pleased to be able to purchase the Ethiopia Shakiso Mormora (reviewed here at 92) as certified organic at the farm level. But nothing on the bag indicates this certification, as per U.S. law.

Coffee tree growing in the Guji Highlands of southern Ethiopia. Courtesy of Revel Coffee.

However, Haden Polseno-Hensley, co-owner of Red Rooster Coffee Roaster, whose Ethiopia Kayon Mountain scored 93, pursues a business model committed to organic certification. He observed that organic-certified coffees are often of higher quality than those not certified. He says, “When we started in 2010, we were 100% organic. This was based on philosophical choice, but also marketing strategy. Large grocery store chains, especially ‘lifestyle’ chains, want organics. They want to press the ‘easy’ button when it comes to showing their customers that they have quality goods. Ethiopia is a strange bird, though. While it may be true that most Ethiopian coffees are de facto organic, we’ve actually come to find that the certified coffees are often of a higher quality. Is this because the producers are more attentive to cultivation and processing since they are paying for certificates?”

The terraced slopes of Kayon Mountain in the Guji Zone of southern Ethiopia. Courtesy of Cafe Imports.

Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea is represented here with an Ethiopia Gelgelu Natural (93). Owner Barry Levine regards organic certification as important because many consumers prefer it. But, as a company, he says Willoughby’s is “quality-centric.” He goes on to say that, “We would have purchased this coffee had it been conventional, but have a preference, when the quality is really there, to have an organic offering, too. We have, in fact, had other excellent Ethiopia Naturals this season that were not organic, but were just too good to pass up. This coffee offered it all.” Because of logistical considerations, some Willoughby bags include the USDA organic seal and others do not. For this particular coffee, Willoughby’s prints the organic certifier on their bags in lieu of the USDA stamp.

Coffee cherries drying on raised beds at the Worka Cooperative in southern Ethiopia. Courtesy of Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea.

The same holds true for Kickapoo Coffee, whose Ethiopia Kirite also scored 93. Caleb Nicholas says, “About 97 percent of the coffee we roast is certified organic, and we would not have purchased the Kirite if it were conventional. The USDA seal is optional, and we designed the bags to accommodate both organic and non-organic. If we put the seal on it, it would be just another sticker. Instead, we just label the coffee as organic and list our certifier, MOSA.”

Kickapoo Coffee’s roasters working side by side on vintage Probat machines. Courtesy of Kickapoo Coffee.

The Ethiopia Amaro Gayo Natural roasted by Ben’s Beans (92) happens to be certified organic, but co-owner Glen Lundstrom is willing to purchase quality coffees that are farmed organically but do not have certification if his trusted importers recommend a particular coffee. He says, “We are looking for coffees that are grown and processed free of any sort of chemical intervention. We specialize in certified organic coffees because this provides our customers with a level of confidence that the coffees are grown and processed using healthy and sustainable practices.  However, we also realize that, because many of these coffees come from smaller farms, organic certification is not always an economically viable option, even though [the farmers] may grow and produce the coffees using the same practices as a certified farm.  That is why we rely heavily on our import partners to provide us with background information on the farms and processors of any coffee we purchase.”

“Organic certification,” says Aaron Jordan of Roast House Coffee, whose Ethiopia Suke Quto scored 92, “is the bedrock of Roast House’s green coffee purchasing values. Seven years ago when the company started, we made a commitment to exclusively purchasing organically grown coffees, and one of the ways we prove that commitment is through certifications. It’s very important to the core of our business values and ethics.” So, Roast House has essentially built its business on organic certification as a fundamental value, and has drawn customers who share that priority, rather than picking and choosing coffees to market to various customer sectors. However, the Suke Quto bag doesn’t include the USDA organic seal, simply because Jordan reserves bags with the seal for his year-round offerings. (The Suke Quto is a limited reserve).

Also reviewed here are Black Oak’s Ethiopia Hambela Alaka (93) and Noble Coffee’s Ethiopia Bishan Fugu (93), both of which are certified USDA organic, and labeled as such on the bags. Red E Café’s Homacho Waeno Natural (93; one of two coffees on this list imported by Sustainable Harvest), is in the same category as the Big Creek and Revel coffees noted above: certified organic at the farm level, but with no certification indicated on the bags.

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By 2011, however, when Coffee Review next surveyed fine Nicaragua coffees, it appeared that the third-party certification element of the coffee-development strategy was beginning to take a back seat to the gourmet strategy.

The terraced slopes of Daniel microlot. Courtesy of @goldmtncoffee.

In our 2004 Nicaragua report, for example, six of the 10 coffees reviewed were certified organically grown, and three of those six were both organic- and Fair Trade-certified. (See the end of this article for a quick overview of current third-party certifications.) By our 2011 report, the number of certified coffees had dwindled to three.

Flash Forward to 2017

What we learned in this most recent cupping is that, while certifications do remain as market differentiators, their relevance to specialty coffee and its producers has given way even more definitively to the practices that today we are likely to call direct trade or “third wave”: small lots of exceptional coffee differentiated by tree variety and/or processing methods and facilitated by direct relationships between roasters and producers. This is a trend, of course, that we are seeing globally across all coffee-producing countries and their consuming-country trading partners.

Yellow-fruited coffee cherries being harvested at Finca Los Pinos. Courtesy of Thanksgiving Coffee Company.

Of the 55 coffees we cupped for this report, only 10 are reported to have certifications of any kind: two organic, three Fair-Trade/organic, three Utz-certified, two Rainforest Alliance-certified, and two certified Bird-Friendly by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (a rigorous certification that can only be earned by farms that already hold organic certification). The fall-off in the importance of certification as market differentiator is even more apparent when we contemplate the roster of the nine top-rated coffees reviewed here. Only two of the nine hold certifications of any kind, and neither of those certifications are Fair Trade. (Coffee veterans may recall that Fair Trade at its founding was particularly focused on Nicaragua, with Fair Trade’s early prominence fueled by heartbreaking reports of the suffering caused there by the 2003 drop in coffee prices.)

Song Bird Coffee, certified as Bird-Friendly by the Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of Thanksgiving Coffee.

To Certify or Not to Certify?

Does the relatively low number of certified coffees of any kind we cupped for this month’s report indicate that social and environmental sustainability concerns have taken a backseat? Yes and no. In fact, our research, albeit anecdotal, suggests that direct trade has prioritized a different set of considerations, some of which result in increased sustainability, but all of which are centered on quality and distinction.

In a phone interview, Ben Weiner, president and CEO of Gold Mountain Coffee Growers, and a partner-producer of two coffees we review here (Boil Line Coffee’s 93-rated Daniel Microlot and Ironclad Coffee Roasters’ 92-rated Tolliver’s Reserve Nicaragua Gold Mountain Fruit Candy Nanolot), says that certifications don’t always go far enough, either in terms of sustainability or in securing a fair wage for farmers. “And certifications,” he says, “don’t always prioritize quality,” which he says everything Gold Mountain does revolves around.

Manuel and Yesenia Lopez (and son), co-producers of Ironclad Coffee Roasters’ Tolliver’s Reserve Nicaragua Gold Mountain Fruit Candy Nanolot. Courtesy of Ironclad Coffee Roasters.

Weiner, also a coffee farmer in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, describes some of the practices his farm has instituted to improve and ensure quality: “We use refractometers to assess when our cherries are at the optimal brix for picking, and we use light sensors, as well as expertly trained pickers, to weed out imperfections.” Perhaps not coincidentally, Gold Mountain’s own farm is named “Finca Idealista.” The company sponsors computer classes for women and girls in the community; gives access to credit for farmers in a country in which credit is virtually non-existent; and helps to provide books and other supplies for local schools. Gold Mountain received an excellence award from the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) in 2016 for their pioneering work in educating Nicaraguan farmers in sustainability practices, such as composting, reducing water usage, and buying land in order to protect it from development.

Tasting Good and Doing Good

There seems to be an implicit argument being made by those who favor direct-trade sourcing of coffees over going through the usual exporter channels: that empirical evidence leads green buyers to develop trust in the producers of the coffees they choose by visiting the farms and seeing for themselves what happens on the ground, rather than leaving holistic assessments to third parties. We spoke with all nine of the roasters whose coffees we review here, and all but two described their coffees as the result of direct-trade relationships. The importance of those relationships, said several of the roasters, is second only to quality, and a close second at that.

For Ryan O’Rourke, founder of Ironclad Roasters based in Richmond, Virginia, a trusting relationship with farmers is more important than certification. His natural-processed microlot Pacamara reviewed here at 92 isn’t certified organic, but he says, “The famers do employ sustainable practices that meet or exceed USDA standards; they just prefer not to pay for the certification.”

The Coffees

While it may be difficult to sort out the tangled layers of certifications, sustainability claims, questions of fair prices, and community stewardship, it wasn’t at all hard to identify great-tasting coffees among the 55 we cupped for this report. Scores ranged from 77-94, with an average score of 84. The top-rated nine coffees we review here scored between 92 and 94 points, an impressive showing.

Farmer Daniel Zeledón, whose microlot Caturra coffee, roasted by Boil Line Coffee Company, we review in this report. Courtesy of @goldmtncoffee.

It seems that, in 2017, Nicaragua is very much riding the “gourmet” wave as described by Davids in 2004. For example, two of the signs of the new gourmet paradigm in fine coffee are differentiating small lots of coffee by tree variety and by processing method. To understand the differentiation as it applies to Nicaragua, we first need to understand the norm. Coffee in Nicaragua traditionally has been produced from a mix of varieties of Arabica, most of them traditional and respected (Caturra, Catuai) but none particularly distinctive-tasting. The standard processing method in Nicaragua, as it has been for decades throughout Central America, is the wet or “washed” method, wherein the soft fruit residue is removed, or “washed “ from the coffee seeds or beans immediately after they are picked and before they are dried.

Variety and Processing Method

Of the nine coffees reviewed in this report, eight were produced from lots of single tree varieties, and of those eight, six were produced from unusual (and often difficult to grow) varieties particularly recognized for their distinctive cup. Several of these coffees were unorthodox in both in variety and processing method. Take, for example, the four coffees produced from the bold-beaned, savory-tending Pacamara variety. Still unusual and rare, the Pacamara variety is a cross between the huge-beaned Maragogipe and Pacas, a selection of Bourbon. Of the four reviewed Pacamara samples, two were natural-processed (dried in the whole fruit), one honey-processed (fruit skins only removed, dried in the fruit flesh), and only one processed by the more orthodox wet-processed method.

Natural-processed coffee cherries drying at Finca Los Pinos. Courtesy of Thanksgiving Coffee.

Natural- and honey-processing are increasingly favored by third-wave roasters aiming for differentiation in cup and story. Very generally speaking, a classic washed-processed Nicaragua cup tends to be richly sweet with a soft, unobtrusive acidity and a flavor profile that leans more toward chocolate than fruit. By contrast, the dried-in-the-fruit coffees reviewed this month are exuberantly fruit-forward, constituting what we often call “caveat coffees” in our lab because they depart so dramatically from what consumers have come to expect in a Central America cup. The honey-processed Taokas Coffee Studio Pacamara roasted in Taiwan (93), and the natural-processed Ironclad (92) epitomize these caveats dramatically, while the Modern Times Limoncillo “Funky” (93) Red Pacamara pushes natural-process differentiation to the extreme. Here the coffee fruit was allowed to dry on the tree rather than picked and dried, a very tricky and unorthodox approach to be sure. The unusually slow drying process produced a crisply sweet fermenty character that some coffee-drinkers will love and others, perhaps, not so much. We enjoyed its evocation of cascara (dried coffee cherries) and its herby-sweet depth. We found the Reunion Island washed Pacamara (92) a more classic cup: balanced, chocolate-toned, bittersweet.

Another confident outlier in regard to variety is the Paradise Roasters’ Jinotega Gesha, which tied for the top score at 94. The still rare and pricy Gesha variety of Arabica is celebrated for its strikingly floral, refined and complete cup. This version, processed by the traditional wet or washed method, is almost Kenya-like in character, richly sweet-savory and high-toned, with elegant hints of myrrh.

The other top-scoring coffee, Giv COFFEE’s Un Regalo de Dios (94), was produced from trees of the Bourbon variety, one of the world’s oldest and most respected, impeccably wet-processed, fruit-saturated yet restrained, juxtaposing equal parts fine musk and narcissus-like florals.

Concluding with a Classic

Perhaps the only coffee presenting a classic Nicaragua profile among all of the nine highest scorers is Thanksgiving Coffee’s Organic Shade-Grown Nicaragua (92), a blend of the respected Maracaturra, Caturra and Catuai varieties meticulously processed by the traditional wet method. It is also the only coffee we review that is certified Bird-Friendly by the Smithsonian Institution, hands-down the most uncompromising and rigorous of environmentally focused certifications. The idealism and passion that drove the growing and farm management that produced this coffee clearly went into its processing as well: It is an impressively pure coffee. Of all nine coffees we reviewed this month, it most clearly represents the classic Nicaragua cup of tradition, with its inherent balance, quietly juicy acidity and buoyant, satiny mouthfeel.

Farmer Byron Corrales at Nicaragua’s Finca Los Pinos. Courtesy of Thanksgiving Coffee.

This cupping of 55 Nicaragua coffees was a joyride of an exploration, full of discoveries along the way. What seems clear is that Nicaragua is in an exciting process of reinventing itself as a coffee-producing country, and it will be fascinating to watch where it goes.

Coffee Certification Primer

Currently, seals for five major third-party-verified certifications for coffee appear on coffee websites and bags in North America. Here is a very quick overview of their varying focuses.

Organic describes coffees that have been certified by a third-party agency as having been grown and processed without the use of pesticides, herbicides, or similar synthetic chemicals. Certified by the USDA for import purposes.

Fair Trade certified coffees have been purchased from farmers at a minimum “fair” price as defined by NGOs in the U.S. and internationally. (The complex landscape of fair trade was rendered more complicated when Fair Trade USA split from Fair Trade International) after ongoing disputes about the organization’s direction.) Fair Trade emphasizes economic and social fairness for small-holding producers and coffee-worker organizations. Since it does not emphasize environmental issues, it is often coupled with organic certification to create a comprehensive Organic/Fair Trade certification for consumers.

Rainforest Alliance is an NGO devoted to biodiversity conservation. Alliance criteria also consider treatment of workers and community well being. RFA is a rigorous, yet relatively accessible and flexible certification.

Utz Certified particularly focuses on transparency and traceability throughout the supply chain for coffee, cocoa, tea and hazelnuts. It is a particularly important certification in Europe. It will merge with Rainforest Alliance at the end of 2017.

The Smithsonian Bird Friendly Certification, managed by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, is specifically designed to reward coffee growers for shade-growing practices that preserve habitat for migrating birds and other wildlife. Strict criteria stipulate that coffee farms maintain a minimum of 40% shade and at least 10 tree species. Farms seeking Bird Friendly Certification must also be organically certified. Smithsonian Bird Friendly is the only certification that includes criteria for shade management.

The post The New Nicaragua: Direct Trade Coffees Rule appeared first on Coffee Review.

Assuming this pair of third-party certifications is enough to satisfy skeptical consumers’ socio-economic and environmental concerns, what about the pleasure part?

Eight at 90 or Better

Of the nineteen certified coffees we tested, eight rated 90 or higher, an excellent showing. Five others rated 87 to 88, a decent showing, leaving only six rated 86 or lower.

However, this impressive performance is mainly owing to coffees from one origin. The five top-rated coffees, all 91 to 93, are Ethiopias. By comparison, only two Central America coffees attracted a 90-or-better rating: the spicy, nutty Ghost Town Guatemala CODECH (90) and the deeply chocolaty Paradise Roasters FTO Guatemala Huehuetenango (90). A gently pungent Peru from Giv COFFEE (90) filled out the complement of eight 90-plus reviews. We also reviewed two solid 88-rated coffees, the sweet-savory, perfumy Honduras Finca Gaby from Magnolia Coffee and the crisply pungent Roast House 423 Blend, comprised of Fair Trade/organic coffees from Guatemala, Mexico and Indonesia.

Ethiopia Explanation

The dominance of the Ethiopia coffees is probably attributable to three factors. As always, the complexity and originality of the native varieties of Arabica grown in the southern and western parts of the country give Ethiopias a sensory edge, no matter what the theme of the cupping. Second, the ongoing epidemic of leaf-rust disease in Central America constitutes a persistent challenge for all producers in the region, but particularly, perhaps, for small-holding farmers like those responsible for most of the region’s Fair Trade/organic-certified production. Also, the seasonal timing of our cupping may have discouraged the submission of more Fair Trade Certified coffees from Peru, one of the countries where the Fair Trade program has been most successful.

Sustainability Gone Mainstream

Finally, and most controversially, it is possible that Fair Trade certification may be losing its value as a marketing differentiator for coffee in the U.S. In other words, the Fair Trade seal may not give a coffee and a roaster quite as powerful a boost with consumers as it once did, encouraging a further shrinking of the pool of top Fair Trade Certified coffees available for our cupping. Not because specialty roasters or their customers have lost interest in sustainability for small-holding farmers and other farm workers. Rather, because that commitment appears to have diffused and gone mainstream.

In 1999, when Fair Trade Certified coffee was first launched in the U.S. under the leadership of Paul Rice, there was only one other significant coffee certification: organic. Now there are multiple certifications addressing an overlapping array of socio-economic and environmental concerns. They include major third-party-verified certifications like Rainforest Alliance and UTZ Certified, plus smaller, more specialized certifications like Smithsonian Bird Friendly. Starbucks has its own Café Practices certification, Nespresso its admired AAA Sustainable Quality Program. Mainstream coffee companies have led in the founding of the 4C Association, which sets “an entry-level standard that defines a global common baseline and starts all coffee supply chain actors on the path to the sustainable production, processing, and trade of coffee.”

Additionally, adherents of the loosely defined group of practices called Direct Trade make the argument that their independent efforts to build long-term relationships with producers by paying more for distinctive coffees net better money for those producers and better coffees for their customers in ways that both supplement and exceed what can be achieved through certifying programs like Fair Trade.

And Fair Trade USA itself has modestly widened its mission. Originally available only to democratically run cooperatives of small producers, Fair Trade Certification is now available to groups of small producers who work with a single exporter or wet mill, as well as to some qualifying farms or estates. Nevertheless, Fair Trade USA remains primarily focused on small-holder cooperatives. Ben Corey-Moran, Director of Coffee Supply for Fair Trade USA, points out that 95% of its certified coffees continue to originate with democratically managed cooperatives of the kind that Fair Trade Certification was originally designed to promote and support.

More Pressure on Fair Trade

Other trends are haunting Fair Trade Certified. The rigorously monitored farm-to-cup integration of the Fair Trade Certified movement appears to be unraveling a bit, for example. Three of the ten high-rated coffees we review this month were produced by Fair Trade Certified cooperatives, but because the three roasters retailing these coffees are currently not Fair Trade Certified, they cannot display the Fair Trade USA seal on packaging or websites. The complex reporting and record-keeping involved in maintaining Fair Trade certification is doubtless daunting for smaller roasting companies, as it is for some farmers. The time and effort involved in maintaining certification may make sense for roasting companies that make Fair Trade Certified a major element in their identity and marketing, but it may not for those small companies that simply want to offer one or two good Fair Trade Certified coffees as part of a general product mix.

“Fairly Traded”?

For the record, anyone can call coffees “fair trade” or (the current favorite among copy writers) “fairly traded,” since neither term is the intellectual property of Fair Trade USA. However, only coffees for which the entire supply chain is certified by Fair Trade USA, from producer through importer to roaster, can legally display the Fair Trade USA seal and call its coffees “Fair Trade Certified.” Some complain that this tight vertical monitoring of the supply chain is limiting and coercive. On the other hand, Fair Trade USA also can justifiably complain that roasters who are not certified are freeloading, since Fair Trade USA has invested heavily in the formation and publicizing of the fair trade concept, as well as in helping cooperatives of small holders to produce more and better coffees over the long term.

Nevertheless, even if the institution we know as Fair Trade USA is eventually swamped in a sea of competing certifications, roaster defections and ambiguous marketing language, I would argue that it has honorably and successfully served its cause by pioneering the case for action in support of small-holding coffee producers who for decades have been routinely crushed by the logic of a commodity system pursuing price and volume largely absent of any consideration of environment, people, or quality of goods and experience. Fair Trade Certification itself could perhaps wither (I hope it does not), but it appears that its cause has an enduring life and power.

The post Fair Trade Certified Coffees appeared first on Coffee Review.

The causes turned out to be as varied and lively, and as essentially non-bureaucratic and generous-spirited, as grass-roots specialty coffee itself. One dollar of the sale price of the PT’s Coffee Café del Sol (90) supports a youth soccer training program in the PT’s home town of Topeka, Kansas as a tribute to Jonathan Kaspar, a PT’s barista who loved soccer and who was killed in a traffic accident in 2010. Caribou Coffee donates ten percent of the sales of Amy’s blend (88) to CancerCare, a national non-profit that provides free support services for those affected by cancer diagnosis. The blend was inspired by Amy Erickson, Caribou’s original roastmaster, who lost her battle with breast cancer in 1995.

The Fair Trade movement is, of course, an extremely large, necessarily bureaucratized version of the do-good-through-drinking-good-coffee impulse. Five of the ten coffees we reviewed this month were Fair Trade certified in addition to offering support for other more specific, sometimes endearingly idiosyncratic, causes. The proceeds of the highest-rated Mystic Monk Fair Trade Ethiopia (93), for example, support the building of a monastery for Carmelite monks in Montana, some of whom roasted the coffee we reviewed. The Stauf’s Dominican Republic (88) offers coffee buyers a triple bonus: a coffee that 1) is Fair-Trade certified, 2) was sourced through Café Femenino, a program that assists low-income coffee producers who are women, and 3), additionally donates a generous 20% of sales to the Griswold Residency of the YWCA, a facility that offers shelter and assistance to low-income women in crisis in Stauf’s home town of Columbus, Ohio.

Bicycle Coffee, a roastery founded in 2009 a few miles from the Coffee Review lab, aims to reduce its carbon footprint and inspire a righteously healthy lifestyle by delivering all of its coffees, including this month’s Fair Trade Medium Roast (89), by bicycle. Thanksgiving Coffee in Fort Bragg, California, on the California coast north of San Francisco, is one of the pioneers of cause coffees. Paul Katzeff, the recently retired founder of Thanksgiving, was offering coffees that, if I remember correctly, benefited causes ranging from schools for children of coffee farmers to a new baseball field for the local community around the time most of the people involved in generating this month’s samples were contemplating their first day in kindergarten. We review one of Thanksgiving Coffee’s current cause-supporting offerings, Song Bird Shade Grown (88), a blend of Central American coffees verified by the American Birding Association as grown in mixed species shade that provides significant habitat for migrating song birds. This is verified mixed-species shade, by the way, not simply a sketchy canopy of sterile non-native trees scattered park-like around the fields.

The Coffees behind the Causes

Which gets us to the taste question. Are these ten coffees good-tasting in their various ways? Yes, definitely. Are they super-good? The 93-rated Mystic Monk Ethiopia certainly is, the 90-rated PT’s makes a good case. But even moving down the ratings a couple of notches, I think the point can be made that a coffee like the Stauf’s 88-rated Dominican Republic, a coffee whose sales is saturated with generous commitment extending from the global to the local, successfully fulfills its double-loaded commitment to the consumer: a coffee that does good and tastes good. I am fairly certain that there are coffees offered at Stauf’s at this very moment that would attract higher ratings at Coffee Review; we certainly have reviewed some in the past, like the Nicaragua we rated 94 in August 2011. But 88 is a good score and this Dominican is a solid coffee, and certainly consumers who want to make a modest gesture helping low-income women both at home and at origin will not disappoint their mornings with this gentle, crisply chocolaty cup. Something similar can be said for the other just-under-ninety coffees reviewed here: All are interesting and engaging; all essentially live up to their promise to taste good while doing good.

A Word for Passion, Sympathy and Joy

Those who have come along with me this far doubtless recognize my position, which is that cause coffees like those reviewed this month are one element in the individualistic, open-minded, sometimes quirky, continuously inventive space of specialty coffee. For me they are a sympathy-driven complement to baristas experimenting with tiny variations in pour-over brewing or high-end roasters competing for tiny lots of distinctive coffee, a continuous effort to inject passion, sympathy and joy into our work in coffee and in doing so transcend a larger economic system that all too often seems intent on turning us into unfeeling automatons waiting for the weekend.

Afterword: Carrotmob and Thanksgiving Coffee

A quick return to a recent episode at Thanksgiving Coffee as further confirmation of the experimental, generous-spirited, sometimes eccentric nature of specialty coffee’s engagement with social and economic change. Just this past month Thanksgiving embarked on a collaboration with Carrotmob, an organization that brings people together to spend money as a group to support a business if the business agrees to make an improvement that Carrotmob, and presumably a significant segment of consumers, supports. In the case of the Thanksgiving/Carrotmob September campaign, the goal was to explore and eventually initiate a reduction in carbon footprint by experimenting with transporting coffee from origin to Thanksgiving’s roastery in Fort Bragg by sail rather than by ships powered by oil. Those of us closely involved with coffee will, of course, immediately recognize this goal as charmingly nostalgic (given the colorful history of coffee and sail transport in the early days of coffee) and also perhaps a little challenging technically, given the ease with which green coffee succumbs to fading during prolonged transport from origin.

But for me its quirky idealism impressed. As it turns out, the goal of $150,000 in sales over the month of September was not met, so for better or worse Thanksgiving is off the hook, but considerable money was raised through the campaign for Thanksgiving’s own non-profit Resilience Fund, which buys clean, efficient cook stoves for families of the Mirembe Kawomera cooperative in Uganda.

2012 The Coffee Review. All rights reserved.

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The implied benefits of organically grown coffee point both forward toward the consumer and back toward the producers and their environment. For the consumer, organic coffee may not offer quite the dramatic health advantage that many organic fruits and vegetables do – after all, in coffee production the soft, exterior part of the coffee fruit most exposed to chemical contamination is discarded, the dried seeds are then subject to high temperatures during roasting, driving off volatiles, after which we infuse the dried and roasted seeds in water before throwing them out and drinking the water. Contrast this history of attenuation with strawberries, which we eat whole and raw right off the truck (or plane) from the farm. From what I’ve read, someone who habitually eats conventionally grown strawberries without virtually scrubbing them could be classed as mildly suicidal, whereas someone who drinks conventionally grown coffee appears to be taking at most a very slight, perhaps only hypothetical, risk of consuming traces of potentially harmful chemical residues.

But even if we feel sanguine about drinking conventionally grown coffee, organic growing remains one of the most dramatic and unequivocally positive of sustainable environmental practices. Even though organic growing can be and is practiced on a large, industrial scale, generally it encourages sound environmental practices and discourages unsound practices, like dense plantings of hybrid coffee trees in full sun supported by steady doses of synthetic fertilizer. There is little doubt that organic growing generally, even when practiced on a large, semi-industrial scale, is overall better for the environment and the farm workers than conventional growing.

Organic Certification and Small Holders

In coffee, however, organic certification also has functioned as a means of attracting price premiums and establishing presence in the market for small-holding, peasant coffee farmers. Across the coffee world there are entire regions of small-holding coffee producers who are “de facto” organic: They simply can’t afford chemicals for their little plots of coffee trees. The organic movement in coffee was pioneered in Latin America as a way of gaining premiums for such small producers, and cooperatives of small producers continue to provide the backbone of organic coffee production in most coffee-growing countries.

The association of small-holder cooperatives with organic production became even more firmly established with the advent of Fair Trade certification, a certification explicitly focused on promoting social and economic well-being for small producers and their cooperatives. The two certifications, organic and Fair Trade, dove-tail almost perfectly, and as this month’s sampling of organically certified coffees confirms, such dual certification is ubiquitous in the market place: Thirty-one of the fifty-five coffees we tested were certified both organic and Fair Trade; only twenty-four were certified organic without the complementary Fair Trade seal.

Organic Certification and Quality

The domination of organic coffee production by cooperatives of small-holders is the main reason that many coffee professionals have argued through the years that organically grown coffees are in general inferior in quality to conventionally grown coffees. The argument has nothing to do with the trees or how the trees are grown and fertilized; rather it has to do with the challenge of maintaining consistent quality of fruit removal and drying among the often hundreds of small-holding farmers that make up a typical small-holder cooperative. If only five farmers out of a group of fifty in a cooperative bring in stinky, fermented beans, for example, the overall quality for the entire group of fifty will be compromised.

Contrast this risk with the potential for centralized control of production possible with family-owned small- to medium-sized farms, farms that produce many of the world’s best coffees. Not that cooperatives can’t produce fine coffee; last month’s report on Kenyas certainly confirms they can. Of the thirteen almost sublimely fine Kenyas we reviewed with scores of 92 or higher, eleven out of the thirteen were produced by cooperatives of small producers. Nor is sloppy fruit removal and drying a prerogative of cooperatives; some medium-sized and large farms can and do ship tainted, rain-damaged coffees. Plus coffee production is quite complex and diverse; many cooperatives have centralized mills with excellent quality control, for example, quality control at least as rigorous as exercised by competing privately owned mills.

Starting with Processing Method

Nevertheless, the fifty-five certified organically grown coffees we tested for this month’s article did represent something of a sensory adventure. One of the striking aspects of the coffee turnout for this cupping was the relatively disproportionate number of dried-in-the-fruit or “natural” coffees nominated by roasters. This coffee type, which tends to be fruity, sweet, and often brandy-toned (but also difficult to produce with any consistency), is currently popular among smaller and trendier roasting companies and their consumers. Perhaps that is the reason why so many examples of this still relatively rare coffee type turned up this month. On the other hand, perhaps the simple, low-tech approach represented by dried-in-the-fruit processing (pick ‘em and dry ‘em) particularly appeals to some cooperatives of small producers.

At any rate, we received fourteen such dried-in-the-fruit, “natural” coffees, with the remaining forty-one samples representing more conventional wet-processed or “washed” coffees, meaning coffees processed by removing the fruit from the seeds or beans before drying. In conventional coffee wisdom, the beauty of wet-processed coffees is their potential for transparency and purity. The thinking is, get rid of the soft, sweet fruit before it can ferment or mold and you are more likely to achieve a perfect expression of the natural character of the coffee itself, conditioned only by tree variety and terroir.

The Purist Perspective

From such a purist point of view, the wet-processed coffees we tested did not overly impress. By my judgment, only two of the forty-one wet-processed coffees we cupped expressed a discernibly and absolutely pure wet-processed profile: the Ethiopia Yirgacheffe from Café Tierra (92) and the Ethiopia Sidama from Bard Coffee (92). Both in differing ways expressed the lyric floral, citrus and cocoa potential of native Ethiopia varieties of Arabica without apparent interference from processing idiosyncrasies or flaws.

The Johnson Brothers Guatemala Quiché Chajulense (91) and the Bird Rock Costa Rica Finca Santa Lucia (91) also were wet-processed, and also were attractive and pleasing coffees. In my view, however, neither came across as completely pure and free of the impact of processing. Rather, both showed a richness and cedary pungency that is quite appealing, but that typically derives from the impact of slight, perhaps deliberate, processing idiosyncrasies. It is possible that additional wet-processed coffees in the cupping also expressed transparency in profile, but darker roasting may have made it impossible to register that transparency free of the sensory impact of the darker roast.

Getting the Fruit Right

The dried-in-the-fruit or “natural” coffees we tested showed a rather similar range of response to processing variation. With dried-in-the-fruit coffees at least a hint of sweet-toned, brandy-like fruit is part of the appeal of the type, and this flavor note certainly derives from a mild and hopefully controlled fermenting of sugars in the fruit as it gradually dries around the bean. The trick, as I’ve indicated in earlier articles on the subject, is promoting a sweet, clean, very slightly fermenty fruit character, but one free of other, less attractive taints, like mold or mustiness, salty bitterness or composty over-ferment.

The Doma Costa Rica Las Lajas Natural Process (93) and the Kickapoo Ethiopian Natural Worka Coop (92) both appeared to pull off this balancing act well. The Doma Costa Rica was particularly impressive: lushly fruit-toned yet delicately pure. The Bard Ethiopia Sidama Oromia (91) came very close to a similar balance, as did the Olympia Ethiopia Gedeo Worka (91). But with the exotic Bali Kintamani from Wicked Joe (89) and the sweetly over-the-top Guatemala Finca Santa Isabel Natural from PT’s Coffee (89), we enter the realm of exuberant, explicitly fermented fruit, hearty but rather rough-finishing. Nevertheless, those who enjoy extravagance and intensity may well prefer these wilder coffees to the purer, more balanced profiles higher up on the rating scale.

In any event, the twelve coffees reviewed this month do present an exciting range of sensory possibility, from the pure and transparent to the fruity and edgy, with some very pleasing intermediate stops between. Perhaps it is a tribute to organic producers that such a dramatic range of sensory expression moved from their fields and mills to our cupping table. Certainly we weren’t bored this month.

2011 The Coffee Review. All rights reserved.

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Fair Trade, for those who don’t recall the fine print, is a third-party certification that guarantees peasant farmers what the umbrella organization, Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International (FLO), determines is a “fair” or economically sustainable price for the farmers’ coffees, plus a social premium farmer groups can collectively use to benefit their communities and business activities. In the coffee sector, only farmers who are members of a democratically run cooperative were eligible to apply for Fair Trade certification. Coffees are completely traceable to origin, and farmers, importers and roasting companies who sell and buy Fair Trade certified coffees all contribute a few cents per pound to the relevant Fair Trade certifying organization – in the case of the United States, to TransFair USA. These moneys are used to administer the Fair Trade programs, maintain traceability for Fair Trade products, and continue to raise public awareness of Fair Trade’s particular answer to poverty in coffee-growing regions. Although Fair Trade certification has been extended to other products, from bananas to cotton, coffee represents about 80% of all Fair Trade Certified products imported into the United States. The premiums paid growers plus the cost of contributions to TransFair’s budget are passed along to consumers willing to pay a bit more to support at least some of the hundreds of thousands of peasant coffee growers who are eternally on the short end of the economic stick.

Fair Trade’s early efforts to organize coffee growers piggy-backed on organizational work already carried out by proponents of organic certification. This initial overlapping of Fair Trade and organic certifications has become standard practice today, so much so that almost all of the coffees we received for this month’s cupping were certified both organically grown and Fair Trade.

Fair Trade and the Market

From the beginning critics questioned the quality of Fair Trade certified coffees. If all it takes to get the Fair Trade premium is membership in a democratically run cooperative, the argument ran, where is the financial incentive for farmers to produce quality through careful harvesting, fruit removal and drying of their coffees? This criticism may sound logical, but the logic has been trumped by the more fine-tuned dynamic of the contemporary marketplace. Since Fair Trade creates a niche market (some consumers only buy Fair Trade), coffees compete for attention and higher prices within that niche. Most of the coffees we reviewed this month probably were purchased from farmers for prices that exceed, perhaps considerably exceed, the Fair Trade minimum.

TransFair USA has begun a thoughtfully designed green coffee competition and auction program in Brazil intended to promote quality in Fair Trade coffees from that region, but most of the incentive for quality for Fair Trade producers appears to come from old-fashioned market forces: the best Fair Trade coffees sell for above the minimum and the poorer Fair Trade coffees may not sell as Fair Trade at all.

This development may in part defeat the broader ambition of Fair Trade, which I take is the creation of a price floor for as many small peasant producers as possible. Nevertheless, the price/quality link appears to be a positive outcome both for those Fair Trade certified producers who do meet the quality expectation of the specialty market and for those consumers of Fair Trade coffees who aspire to combine economic justice with coffee pleasure.

A Quality Report Card

We cupped forty-three Fair Trade certified coffees for this article, plus three more that reflect a sort of rogue approach to Fair Trade (fairtradeproof.org) based on self-policing and participation in the Fair Trade Federation, a membership (rather than certifying) organization devoted to “providing fair wages and good employment opportunities to economically disadvantaged artisans and farmers worldwide.”

Overall, we found the range of quality for these forty-six Fair Trade and faux Fair Trade coffees quite impressive for a Coffee Review cupping involving a cross-section of origins. Ratings averaged almost exactly 87. Only two coffees of the forty-six were plainly taste-defective, though neither was outrageously bad. Eight scored 90 or higher, including an impressive four from Ethiopia and one each from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and Guatemala. All of the 90-and-over coffees are reviewed here. Many of the others read as solid high-end specialty coffees, though for us they lacked the little exceptional shimmer of distinction that might push them from 88/89 to 90 and above. We reviewed six coffees in the 88/89 range, including a Kenya (89), Bolivia (89), Honduras (88) and two Sumatras at 89 and 88. Despite the abundance of Ethiopias in our reviews, we also included the 89-rated Archer Farms Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from Target because it appeared to be a worthy effort to make a distinctive Fair Trade coffee available to the mass market.

The Coverage Issue

TransFair USA also has been accused of offering Fair Trade buyers too limited a range of coffee origins and types. This accusation hinges on the fact that some coffee growing industries are almost exclusively reliant on the contributions of small producers and thus make good Fair Trade candidates, while others are dominated by large and mid-sized farms whose scale makes them ineligible for certification. Most Ethiopia coffees are produced by small-holding villagers in simple, chemical-free garden plots, for example, circumstances that encourage Fair Trade and organic certification. Widespread availability of Fair Trade-certified Ethiopias coupled with good harvesting and milling processes and the presence of superb local heirloom varieties of Arabica doubtless account for the success of Ethiopia in this month’s cupping.

Fair Trade certification is a good fit for other origins as well: Peru, Bolivia, Papua New Guinea, Sumatra, Timor, Mexico, Nicaragua, Tanzania, to mention just a few. Not many samples showed up from these origins, however, in part perhaps owing to the timing of this article. Roasters may have wanted to put their best coffee foot forward with what they felt were the freshest and most distinctive offerings on their menu. Nevertheless, very good to outstanding coffees showed up from virtually every part of the world, many showcasing the particular genius associated with their origin. The 90-rated Trailhead Coffee Roasters Brazil expressed the crisp dry-berry understatement we associate with dried-in-the-fruit Brazils; the Fondo Paez Colombia from Conscious Coffee the aromatic, fruit-and-chocolate-toned richness peculiar to many Colombias; the Batdorf & Bronson Costa Rica the balance and resonance we typically expect from this origin.

The Cooperative Challenge

The real challenge for excellence in Fair Trade coffees simply resides in the fact of their production by cooperatives. As coffee insiders know well, discipline is difficult to maintain in cooperatives. A handful of farmers who pick too much unripe fruit or who fail to cover their drying coffee when it rains can mess things up for the hundred other farmers who do things right. However, coffee insiders also know that cooperatives with strong quality traditions and disciplined organizations supported by reasonable infrastructure can produce some of the world’s most exquisite coffees; witness the great cooperative coffees of Kenya.

As I cupped many of this month’s coffees I felt (OK, maybe projected) the tension of their production in the cup, a tension between the purity that comes from coffee discipline and the understandable compromises that come from working in circumstances of limitation and challenge that most of us can hardly imagine: carrying a sack of ripe coffee fruit for a couple of miles to the mill every morning on your back, for example. In almost all of these coffees a little edge of imperfection crept into the cup, yet supporting it and giving it resonance and completeness was a fundamental soundness that only comes from dogged discipline and persistence. Take the little pungent herby note in the Yo el Rey Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, for example, which probably derived from mild exposure to moisture during the drying of the parchment coffee. A little more intense and this note might overwhelm the fundamental ripe sweetness of the coffee, but here it acts as a surprising little complication, and a reminder of the struggle that brought this coffee out of little garden plots in Ethiopia surrounding tiny mud-and-stick houses with thatched roofs through collective dedication of farmers and cooperative organizers and on through the sensory intelligence of exporters, importers and roasters to us.

2009 The Coffee Review. All rights reserved.

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Most people are familiar with the general bird-coffee-shade connection. It is a story that is easy to understand in broad outline, but complex and ambiguous in detail.

The basic “shade-grown coffee” story runs like this: Farmers used to grow their coffees naturally in thickets of shade that provided cover and sustenance for animals and migrating birds, but now they are chopping down trees and growing new kinds of coffee right in the sun, compensating for the advantages of shade (production of organic material) by heaping on chemical fertilizers, and compensating for natural limits on pests (birds eat some pests, for example) by using pesticides. The more sophisticated tellers of this story might add that a transition from shade- to sun-grown coffee is particularly concerning in areas like southern Mexico and Central America where migrating birds are “squeezed” by geography into relatively narrow corridors and where, studies have indicated, they count on crucial support from the sustenance and cover provided by coffee grown in mixed-species shade.

Shade-Grown Caveats

Overall, this is a reasonably true story and a useful one. Unfortunately, it can be grossly over-generalizing when recklessly applied to the larger world of coffee. There are many, many places in the world where coffee has never been grown in shade or does not grow well in shade, but where coffee nevertheless can be grown in reasonable, often close, harmony with nature if farmers care enough to put aside forest reserves, provide wildlife corridors, and pursue other sustainable agricultural practices, up to and including organic agriculture.

Then there is the problem of definition. Some coffee is grown in park-like environments in which neatly pruned rows of non-native shade trees provide a carefully controlled degree of shade. The most common technical descriptor for this carefully managed (though still environmentally positive) version of shade-growing is “specialized” shade. Coffees reviewed this month like the rich, gently fruit-toned Kickapoo Coffee Organic Bolivia Cenaproc (90) and the bright, classic Batdorf & Bronson Guatemala Antigua Finca El Valle (90) probably were grown under this kind of shade. The best Antigua farms, for example, are lovely, shaded places with a dense canopy of trees but without the richly complex natural environment provided by the other extreme of the shade-grown spectrum, the rare but impressive “rustic shade,” in which coffee trees are often casually scattered amid what is essentially a forest made up of a rich mix of indigenous trees and shrubs. Obviously this last version of “shade-grown” is the style favored by the Smithsonian Institution’s Bird-Friendly certification.

We review three such certified shade-grown, bird-friendly coffees, the Arbor Day Mexico Ismam Co-op (92), Arbor Day Nubes de Oro (91), and the Counter Culture Coffee Guatemala Huehuetenango (92). All are complex and richly nuanced coffees. They present to those who love migratory birds as much as they love fine coffee three excellent, if geographically constrained, choices. None, by the way, are classically pure coffees; their nuance is enriched by slight, serendipitous irregularities in processing that attractively complicate the impressive fruit and floral tones.

More Ambiguity: Garden Coffees

On the other hand, there are those who may aspire to support the general health of the environment with their coffee buying, but who do not want to limit their coffee world to a handful of environmentally impeccable coffees from southern Mexico and Guatemala.

In various ways the other nine coffees reviewed here respond to this need. They simultaneously dramatize the ambiguity of the term “shade-grown” once we move beyond the environmentally near-perfect but limited world of Smithsonian Bird-Friendly Certified coffees.

Take, for example, the two Ethiopia coffees reviewed this month, both from the celebrated Yirgacheffe region of southern Ethiopia: the intense lemon-and-floral Conscious Coffee Yirgacheffe Oromia (90) and the wild and brandyish, dried-in-the-fruit Coffee Klatch Ethiopia Wondo Bonko (90). Both are what in Ethiopia are called “garden coffees.” Scattered throughout the Yirgacheffe region are tiny family plots in which a casual mix of coffee trees, fruit trees, food crops and tallish banana-like trees surround the family compound. The coffee provides a little cash and the other trees and plants supplies the food, animal feed, and other simple material needs of the family.

These farmers use no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, no herbicides. They probably live about as lightly on the land as sedentary human beings can live. But their coffees are not technically shade grown. The banana-like trees and fruit trees provide some shade, but the point here is that these little farms present a moving testimony to traditional harmony around coffee growing rather than an exercise in fulfilling a certification standard by attempting to reinvent a forest. These humble, tiny farms do organic fine, but most likely would not qualify for the Smithsonian Bird Friendly certification (were it extended to regions beyond certain regions of Latin America) or, for that matter, any “shade-grown” certification.

Around the Trees or Under the Trees?

Next on the list of shade-growing ambiguities are Rainforest Alliance coffees. These coffees are seldom “shade-grown.” But they are typically produced on larger farms following demanding environmental and socio-economic criteria. Rainforest Alliance certification requires substantial, multi-species forest reserves, generous buffer zones around watercourses, cautious and sustainable pest management, and the like. It is not an easy certification for farmers, particularly in regard to its environmental standards.

Can we blame roasters who submitted the three Rainforest-Alliance-certified coffees for implying they are “shade grown”? All were produced on farms particularly recognized for their environmental commitment. Two carried organic as well as Rainforest Alliance certification. Selva Negra Estate (Barrington Coffee Selva Negra Estate, 91) is a show-place of spectacularly thoroughgoing environmental and socio-economic responsibility. Coffee at Selva Negra is apparently grown amid shade trees (at least forty different species) rather than technically “under” them. Yet I suspect many migrating birds are happy to stay over in the lush forest reserves of Selva Negra.

In short, none of the coffees reviewed this month are environmental lightweights. Ten were certified organically grown, for example. If roasters occasionally slightly missed the target with the “shade-grown” epithet stated or implied on bag or website, I suspect that in spirit what they were trying to say was that there were a whole lot of other trees, and birds, and positive environmental practices around where this particular coffee was grown.

2009 The Coffee Review. All rights reserved.

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However, from the general point of view of coffee buyers who simply want to help rather than hurt with their coffee purchases, these two programs complement one another nicely. Fair-Trade certification’s emphasis on democratically run cooperatives of peasant growers means that it rewards and makes available to the specialty market interesting coffees that were previously lost in the faceless flow of anonymous commerce. Rainforest Alliance balances the more targeted focus of Fair-Trade by recognizing and rewarding farmers regardless of scale or ownership, but who nevertheless pursue progressive, often impeccable environmental and social practices with their farms and workers.

First Review of Rainforest-Certified Single-Origins

We have mounted reviews of Fair-Trade certified coffees in past issues, but this month is our first effort to survey the retail market for certified single-origin coffees from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms. By way of context, we have added a review of a mass-market Rainforest Alliance Certified blend (minimum 30% certified content) offered by Kraft Foods’ Yuban brand.

What was most striking about the sourcing for this article was how a relative handful of producers dominated the selection of green coffees. Although twenty-four roasters submitted a total of thirty-four retail samples, the thirty-four retail samples represented green coffees from only eleven producers. Five of the thirty-three submissions were produced on the famous Daterra farms in the Cerrado region of Brazil, five were different lots of the celebrated Geisha from Esmeralda Estate in Panama, four came from the same cooperative in the Sidamo region of Ethiopia, and two each came from the ecologically progressive farms Mesa de los Santos in Colombia and Selva Negra in Nicaragua.

We ended by reviewing the three top-rated of the five Esmeralda Geisha samples, the two top-rated of the five Daterra coffees, including the naturally low-caffeine “Opus 1” type, the two top-rated Ethiopias, one dry-processed and one wet, and one each of the Mesa de los Santos and Selva Negra submissions. We included loners from Guatemala (the fine Santa Isabel from PT’s Coffee, 92), a suave Panama from Carmen Estate (Coffee Klatch, 91), and a bold-beaned El Salvador Pacamara from The Roasterie (90).

Exemplary Farms and Newly Certified Coops

The appeal of the Rainforest Alliance Certified program is clear for exemplary larger farms whose size and centralized management make them ineligible for Fair-Trade certification. Take Mesa de los Santos and Selva Negra. Both are already committed to organic certification, Fair-Trade is not available to them, so adding Rainforest Alliance Certified is a logical step in confirming and publicizing their passionate environmental commitments and generous social programs. Although the Daterra farms do not focus on organic production and Esmeralda Estate does not pursue it at all, both are models of general commitment to sustainability, social responsibility, and obsessive attention to the quality and distinctiveness of their coffees.

The unusual entrant here is the Ethiopian Koratie (also spelled Korate) cooperative. As indicated earlier, cooperatives and their supporters often find Fair Trade and organic certifications a more congenial way to focus attention on the social and environmental sustainability of their coffees. Generally, Rainforest Alliance Certified standards emphasize quantifiable measures of compliance, making meeting these standards easier for centrally managed organizations with a high degree of control over detail and record-keeping, something that can be difficult for cooperatives of small growers with their varied and informal farm layouts, lack of central authority, and family-oriented labor practices.

However, the Rainforest Alliance has been working with the Sustainable Agriculture Network at adapting their standards to the culture and operating methods of small-holder cooperatives, and the four samples we received from the Koratie cooperative demonstrate some of the first fruits of this effort. Predictably perhaps, the sensory character of the four Koratie samples reflects their small grower context. All represented the newly revived style of dry-processed coffees from southern Ethiopia. Saturated with blueberry-toned fruit but just a touch fermented and musty, they were easy to like but difficult to rate, given the downside of the ferment-induced astringency, particularly prominent as the cup cooled. But readers who enjoy this edgy, explosively fruity style of coffee will enjoy these offerings, particularly the Flying Goat Sidamo Koratie (90) reviewed here. And future crops should improve as the coop responds to market expectations for its newly certified coffees.

Coffee Character and the Esmeraldas

If the Ethiopia Koratie samples often showed too intense (or too uncontrolled) a character, the main weakness with many of the other Rainforest Alliance Certified coffees was not quite enough character: They tended to lack complexity and nuance. This was not true of the five Esmeralda Geisha samples, of course. Here the flowers-lemon-and-cocoa character of the extraordinary Geisha variety of Arabica shone unmistakably in the cup. All five Esmeralda samples were impressive: Terroir (95), Coffee Klatch Lot #9 (94), Flying Goat Lot #7 (93), PT’s Coffee (Batches 6 and 10, 92), and Paradise Roasters (Batch 8, 92). I found that I preferred those versions in which slightly better balance allowed the distinctive Geisha aromatics to express themselves with less competition from the acidity. Those who enjoy brighter, more acidity-forward coffees may reverse my preferences and favor the Paradise or PT’s Esmeraldas to the three versions we review this month.

Other Fair-Trade and Rainforest Differences

Finally, a word about process and criteria differences between Fair-Trade and Rainforest Alliance certification. Fair-Trade defines a minimum price for all certified coffees, tracks the shipments from grower to retailer, claims a small fee from each component of the supply chain along the way, then uses these funds to effectively advance public awareness of Fair Trade and the issues it addresses, thus increasing the market value of the certification for both producers and retailers. By the way, in today’s green coffee market good Fair-Trade coffees typically sell for considerably more than the minimum price required by certification.

On the other hand, Rainforest Alliance allows the market to define a premium for its certification seal and is mainly supported by grants, making it a leaner organization with less media presence. Rainforest Alliance emphasizes that the program certifies farms, not coffees. All coffee produced by a Rainforest Alliance Certified farm is, in effect, Rainforest Alliance Certified. Finally, Rainforest Alliance is easier on those who create certified blends. Fair-Trade certified blends must contain 100% Fair-Trade coffees, whereas Rainforest Alliance will allow blends with as little as 30% content from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms to carry their green frog seal. Given the limited number of coffee origins currently producing Rainforest Alliance Certified coffees, something like the 30% policy may be a necessity at this point or the program might wither. On the other hand, the success of Rainforest Alliance Certified in large-volume producers like Brazil means that, although there may be fewer origins available to a Rainforest Alliance blender than to a Fair-Trade blender, there sometimes are larger volumes of certified coffee available from those fewer origins.

30% Rainforest Alliance Certified Blends

This last situation – minimum 30% coffee from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms required in order to use the seal coupled with the possibility of buying large quantities of certified coffee from certain origins – has meant that at least one mass-market commercial coffee company is managing to offer Rainforest Alliance Certified blends: Kraft Foods’ Yuban. Based on a reading of cup profile, the blend we cupped (Yuban Original) probably contains enough Brazil from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms to qualify for the certification seal, with a good part of the remainder of the blend inexpensive robustas, perhaps steamed to remove flavor taints. The result is a Rainforest Alliance Certified version of the bland, woody, faintly sweet supermarket profile that has come to dominate canned coffee shelves over the last two decades. Interestingly and perhaps admirably, Yuban has attempted to go green in other respects with this coffee, using fiber cans containing Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified material and a minimum 50% recycled content.

2008 The Coffee Review. All rights reserved.

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