I recently returned from my first real coffee jury experience: Crop of Gold, or Cosecha De Oro, of Costa Rica fame. While many of you may be aware of the Cup of Excellence structure, this one is a little different. The Costa Ricans got all upity and full of theselves (I'm being sarcastic here), and said, "hey we can do this ourselves" and made up their own competition. It remains one of the only home-grown coffee competitions/auctions of it kind for this reason....which I think is pretty cool. I only hope they can keep it going and don't cave into the pressure from the man.
In another original move, they featured an "Official Roastmaster" to sample roast all the coffees. That honor/chore went to Paul Thornton of CBI. Couldn't think of anyone better. The roasts were on point everyday!
Well, the coffees were really amazing and surprising, with new micro mills and adventurous processing making the scene. The majority of the coffees were truly stellar and as elegant as we know Costa Rica coffee can be. Some of the judges from Europe had a good time with the new American descriptors for the not-so-stellar coffees, though.
Here are some examples from our discussions:
- "this coffee is like a comfortable easy chair: makes me want to take a nap"
- " nobody home"
- "This is a party crasher....snuck in the backdoor when the bouncer wasn't looking"
- "this coffee promised to pick me up at the airport. I waited and waited and it never showed....had to call a cab"
Okay, maybe you had to be there, but we laughed and laughed at ourselves.
Interestingly, when a coffee was great, we were able to use accepted and standard terms to describe it.
Keep and eye on the SCACR site for word on the auction.
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I don't want this to sound facetious, but didn't Starbucks almost completely buy up the country of Costa Rica, vis a vis the coffee production outside of La Minita and a few other farms?
ReplyDeleteI asked someone (not Susie) last year why Costa Rica wasn't on the CoE tour, and they brought up this; it wasn't the first time I had heard it either. I think someone from Royal a year or two ago told me that Starbies was making a move to corner the market on CR coffees.
What's up with that, Trish?
Well, Starbucks does do a lot of business in Costa Rica, for sure. They can't seriously own the whole country...if this is really what you're suggesting here. Kinda smacks of urban legend to me.
ReplyDeleteI think that they began Cosecha De Oro simply because they can. It is a very affluent coffee producing country (as they go) , very organized and able to do these things themselves. Guatemala is coming back to the CoE party this year...they could seriously do this themselves as well.
think of the *enormous* buying pressure big green must be feeling. they just called their recent target of 30k stores completely attainable.
ReplyDeletemark, even with that much purchasing power, sbux rarely offers a s.o. costa rica (though i know it figures prominently in at least one of their blends). maybe, just maybe, that's a testament to the indies out there and their collective 'purchasing power.'
trish, did you get pictures from the event?
I was told a few times that Starbucks did not show up to buy in Costa Rica last season. A huge blow to the industry there, which accounted for about 35% of all export.
ReplyDeletetruth or tale?
alistair,
ReplyDeletewell, they have an agronomy center in c.r. with (i believe) a small handful of full-time staff there and they work pretty closely with a number of farms and even have the exclusives on one of them. so i wouldn't be too sure about the completeness of that story.
I know for a fact that Starbucks is still buying coffee in CR. They have developed a quality seal of their own, in fact. There is a set of standards or something, and farms that sell to Starbucks get certified. The mark was proudly displayed on a milll's wall...next to the Rainforest Alliance or Organic Certification seal, for example. The producer always wanted to point it out to us.
ReplyDeletethe sbux certification is called "c.a.f.e practices." coffee and farmer equity. it's a whole detailed series of certifications that sbux uses to ensure quality, sustainability, transparency. it's tough to get certified and certification means bigger payouts. the more incentives you qualify for on the c.a.f.e. practices list the more sbux will pay you based on a percentage scale. some examples are: minimal to no use of pesticides; recycling/reusing water to minimize/eliminate runoff (only one farm i know of has ever qualified for this one); living wages and benefits for pickers and farming communities (i.e., clinics, decent housing); no child labor; minimal/no defects in the cup; 100% financial transparency.
ReplyDeleteof course, not all sellers to sbux are certified or 100% certified. but the financial incentives and long-term contracts sbux offers independent of/above "C" prices ensure that many farms will work hard to get c.a.f.e. practices certified.
c.a.f.e. practices is the most comprehensive certification system i'm aware of. maybe only utz kapeh comes close.
the one farm i know of that qualified for water bonuses under starbucks c.a.f.e. practices was in costa rica. they reused almost everything: chaff and parchment gets reused as fuel for the dryers; pulped cherry skins and their water get set aside to 'ferment' further and reused as fertilizer, and so forth. if i remember the name of the c.r. farm i'll post it here....
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