WATTS WORKS - WINTER/SPRING 2003 ORIGIN RECAP

Friends, associates, and fellow coffee guzzlers- Please accept my apologies for the lengthy occupation of the now thoroughly outdated Brasil Cup of Excellence report in this space, and do not be discouraged from checking in more regularly in the future, as I promise you that the content of the Watts Works will be cleaned, scrubbed, and refilled with new material on a somewhat consistent basis.  Two thousand three has been plowing forward at an unrelenting pace, marked and driven by an unprecedented amount of travel to Latin America.  As Intelligentsia has continued to grow as a company we have become much more active at origin and redoubled our efforts to locate and develop the types of mind-bending coffees that transform the morning cup from a routine into a culinary event. To find these coffees requires searching, and there is no better way or place to conduct such a search than at the very source. This May I was in Nicaragua for a Cup of Excellence competition and headed directly to El Salvador for another one. In between I had a chance to spend a relaxing day at the beach on the Pacific, and took advantage of the opportunity to hunt for a pretty green ocean rock to put next to the red and gold ones that I have. I walked on the sand for 15 minutes hoping the rock I sought would find its way onto my path, but alas it did not. Fortunately, when the sand ended I came across a massive cache of stones, herded together by the ocean.  Here I found the stone I was looking for, and many more of equivalent beauty that I had never before envisioned.

This memory describes my coffee buying experience, albeit somewhat lamely. The point is that if one is looking for a coffee with extremely particular characteristics, the best way to find that coffee is to go to where coffees exist in great abundance and dig in.

In February I traveled to Nicaragua with Doug Zell and a crew of like-minded coffeemen and spent ten days driving around the country to get acquainted with many of its most well organized cooperatives. I visited mills of every shape and size, met people that could grow 1000 lbs of green coffee a year and others that produced 100,000.  All told I cupped nearly one hundred coffees on the trip, which is really just a snapshot from the feature-length, Oscar-caliber wonder that is Nicaraguan coffee. Yet as pleasurable as some of the coffees were, the real pleasure came by way of the warmth that radiated from many of the people we met. Suffice it to say I was inspired. This year we will roast nearly eight times the amount of Nicaraguan coffee we did in 2002.

La Torcaza Estate Left to right Geoff Watts, Tim Castle, Doug Zell and EJ Dawson.

Two weeks later I flew to Panama to visit the Janson brothers, whose La Torcaza coffee we have loved for several years. I was prepared to be impressed given the quality and immaculate appearance of the coffee I have roasted; I did not, however, imagine that I would be drinking water out of the washing channels! Their wet-processing facility was easily the cleanest I have seen, and the Janson’s attendance to the smallest details was one hundred percent impressive. In their cupping lab overlooking the beneficio we had cupping opportunities I have longed for—the chance to taste different varietals grown on the same plot, the same coffee processed by wet fermentation and by aquapulping, and other similarly intriguing comparison studies.  This was followed of course by a few rounds of Balboas, the local brew of choice, and a thoroughly enjoyable evening of Janson hospitality.

Directly from Panama we headed up to Guatemala to visit growers in Fraijanes with whom we’ve worked for 3 years. ‘Relationship Coffee’ has become somewhat of a buzzword in specialty lately; and seems to be applied to a wide variety of different circumstances. To me, good relationships involve commitment, mutual respect, and cooperation. They also mean understanding, something that comes only through personal interaction; it is in part for this reason that we make it a point to visit the farm at least twice a year. The other part is growth—any relationship worth having should lead to mutual betterment, and in the case of this one the Zamora family and ourselves both share the goal of continuously finding ways to elevate the quality of the coffee. When we arrive at the farm it is the end of the harvest season, and the last pickings are just finishing their drying stint on the patio. There were several upgrades put into place for this year’s crop, one of which was the construction of a hand-sorting facility at the farm. In years past the coffee had been taken to Antigua for sorting; now for the first time it could be done onsite, under the supervision of the Zamoras themselves. The trip was a good one, and of course we ended the visit with a few delicious bottles of Gallo, one of the finest Latin beers around.

After an extended two-week stay in Chicago it was time to fly to Oaxaca and go to work on the 2003 edition of our flagship organic coffee, La Perla de Oaxaca. This time I took our head roaster Caleb Mayhall along to aid in the construction.  The day we spent in the CEPCO cupping lab was a hot one, made hotter by the radiant heat of the sample roaster that Caleb was operating for nearly four hours. We cupped through many samples and succeeded in finding one lot that delivered the goods that we covet. That coffee, from the Mixteca area, became the foundation for this year’s La Perla, and we left with a great deal of optimism about how the coffee would eventually come together. The following month we located the two coffees that would provide the missing elements in the blend and gave the thumbs up to mill and ship the coffee.

USA Intermission– SCAA Annual Conference in Boston, MA
 

Having finished an enjoyable Boston show I returned to Chicago for roughly 15 hours before flying to Nicaragua for it’s 2nd Cup of Excellence competition (For more info on Cup of Excellence head over to www.cupofexcellence.org, you will find many treasures there.) This was easily the smoothest, most well organized tasting event I have yet experienced. The roasting was superbly consistent, and the other logistics (water pouring, time management, room temperature, and so forth) were nearly flawless. Willem Boot lended his unique charm and always enjoyable commentary to the event in the role of head judge, easing many of the fears that some jurors had about the first George-less competition (see the previous Watts Works for background on who George is and why he matters). The real stars of the show, however, were of course the coffees themselves, and they stormed the stage with both confidence and flair.

From Managua I flew straight to San Salvador for the first ever Cup of Excellence in El Salvador. This was my first time in the country, and until then my acquaintance with its coffees had been relatively minor. That has fortunately been remedied, and I would like to assure you that El Salvador will likely rise to a position of greater prominence in our lineup. Some of the coffees from this competition were among the finest I have tasted all year. The extended conflict in this country has left it in a unique position in Latin America with regard to its coffee production; because of the turmoil growers here never had the opportunity to plant some of the newer varietals such as Caturra and Catuai that have taken over in Central America, and most of the coffee being harvested is still the old heirloom bourbon varietal.  While I would never make the claim that bourbon is by definition better than other varietals, I will say that I have a distinct appreciation for its qualities, and in blind cuppings of different varietals from the same origin the historical odds favor Mr. B coming out on top. The other things they have in their favor are altitude—many coffees are being grown between 1400-1800 meters—and fantastic volcanic soil. The only thing I found disappointing was the beer, which truth be told left just about everything to be desired. Fortunately, the delicious Nicaragua rum Flor de Cana Centenario was abundantly available, and I gave it the love it deserves.

This fruitful spring yielded a second experience with an origin to which I had never traveled and had little experience with the coffees. After having tasted a sample of a Honduran coffee that caused multiple tasters to shout complimentary expletives in praise of the complexity and richness that the cup had to offer, I signed on for a cupping competition taking place at the end of May in San Pedro Sula. What I found there was extremely encouraging. Honduras is a country that has traditionally sold nearly all of its coffee to commercial roasters at market or below-market prices, despite having all of the advantageous growing conditions enjoyed by its more well-known neighbors. Interestingly, a glance at the geographical origin of many of the top coffees from the Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua competitions reveals that a good heap of them came from farms situated extremely close to the Honduran border. This country screams potential, and the coffees we tasted there had tremendous promise. Many of the most compelling flavor notes and delicate acidic nuances were obscured to some extent by processing errors that muted or clouded the cup, but that is quite treatable. What matters is that they are there, and if given the chance will gladly step out and freak you.

Now we are standing at the doorway of Summer. Chicago is heating up, people are beginning to smile more, and it is a good time to be in the Windy City. As the winds of fortune have it, however, I am gearing up to leave town again, this time on a USAID-financed development project in Rwanda. Check in next month to read all about it.