WATTS WORKS - PERU 2003

Recently I flew to Lima, Peru for a coffee competition organized by APECAFE (you may by now be starting to notice the staggering frequency with which folks in Latin America are able to generate new and exciting acronyms). APECAFE is from what I can tell one of the largest and one of the most organized producer groups currently operating in Peru, although still represent only a small percentage of the total number of growers countrywide. I was accompanied by one of my favorite coffeemen in the industry, Mr. Bob Stephenson from Kavanaugh’s coffee in Berkeley, CA, along with Joseph Rivera from the SCAA and Gloria Montenegro. Our mission was to evaluate 36 coffees that had been pre-selected by the national cuppers from a total of 62 submitted samples.

The idea was simple enough, and all of us had plenty of experience dealing with both large and small-scale coffee competitions, but this occasion presented a few new challenges that provided a nice test of our skills. Before there could be any cupping at all we needed to get the coffees roasted, and for this operation we were led to a small hallway in the basement of the APEX building where the coffee roaster lay waiting like a grizzled bronco watching the brave (or foolish) cowboy approach. I have used many different analogies in the past to describe the experience of roasting on the type of sample roasters that one usually finds at origin, most often in some strange state of disrepair. In this case I could liken it to driving an old Pinto with a crooked axle and a loose steering wheel, trying to find your campsite using a map that doesn’t actually correspond to the layout of the roads. The key with roasting always comes down to ones ability to control the heat, specifically the rate at which that heat is transferred into the coffee bean. With the type of roasters most often available for sampling control is a tough thing to come by, so achieving 36 identical roasts can be an all-night affair; I’m sure we discarded 15 or more roasts in the process, and probably would have thrown out more had it not been for Cristobal, a Peruvian cupper and all-around good guy who had some experience wrestling with this machine.

The next logistical hurdle to clear involved my favorite substance on this planet. I speak of course about the always nourishing, life enriching H2O that makes tasting all this coffee possible. Given that we had 36 coffees to deal with in one day, our hope was to break it into 4 flights of 9 coffees each. But after a few keen dry-erase diagrams and a bit of clever arithmetic it became clear to us that our two stovetop water kettles would not permit this to happen, so we sighed collectively and accepted a nine-round, 4-coffee format.

Fortunately, we were assisted by several very helpful helpers that got the tables cleared and refreshed and the cups washed between rounds with great efficiency. Without them it would have surely taken us 10 or more hours to get all of the coffees evaluated.

Number three on the list of obstacles was the absence of a really good grinder—essential to any cupping. What we had was a tiny old Jericho machine and a larger, older one of similar build. Both had very worn burrs and tended to hoard grounds inside like squirrels, making it very tough to get the coffee volumes consistent cup-to-cup. We countered this problem by obsessively banging the output chamber between each cup in an effort to liberate the imprisoned coffee grounds.

What made this event even more interesting was that none of the judges had experience with the new SCAA cupping form that we were testing out. While it has a lot in common with other forms, every form does have its own idiosyncrasies that can take a bit of time to get used to. Categorically most forms are similar, but the scoring systems themselves can show a tendency to exert a slight upwards or downward pull on overall scores. For fairness we decided to throw out the top and bottom scores from the jury and average the remaining six. This prevented any unusually high or low numbers from having an exaggerated effect on the average. As all 8 of the jury members were skillful cuppers, it didn’t take long to gain control over the form and make it do our bidding.

Eventually we had everything sorted out and went about the cupping with great enthusiasm. I personally had very little experience with Peruvian coffees, having tasted only 20-30 different ones in my lifetime, so I was naturally quite eager to see what was out there. What I found was cause for excitement. While there was only one real exemplary (I usually reserve the term exemplary and terms of its ilk for coffees that earn an 88+ overall score) coffee, there were many very good ones and the ten that graduated into round two all deserved to be there.

More important than the coffees themselves were the particular traits buried within them, wonderful floral and light fruit notes of a character that is pretty unique to Typica coffees. It was very encouraging because I can imagine some of the tastes we encountered framed in a more elegant manner, in a setting where there is no extra “noise” in the cup…. it would be a moving experience. The combination of heirloom varietals, exceptional altitude, and a wonderful climate with abundant/consistent rainfall is a killer recipe, and with the proper cook in the kitchen can produce a coffee that will move mountains. It is with this in mind that I am planning to spend more time this upcoming year in Peru, working with some of the peoples I met on this trip to find that elusive 95+ cup that sometimes seems to exist only in the mind.