Tag: Africa
Terroir Coffee Ademe Bedane Ethiopia Sidamo
I’ve just finished a bag of Ethiopian coffee from Terroir Coffee, the roasting company founded and owned by George Howell, one of the pioneers of the specialty coffee industry. Terroir Coffee was the first roasting company to really spark my imagination, back a little over a year ago when I first began reading and learning about coffee. Since then, it’s probably been a year since I tried one of their coffees, and so it was fun to get back in touch with their coffees.
What has always interested me about Terroir is the earnestness with which they promote specialty coffee and the farmers that grow it. All of their coffees are identified by the farm/coop that produced the coffee, and on their website most of the coffees that are listed include information about the growers, the region, and specifics about the varietal, geography, and harvesting of the coffee. Alongside this their website has a solid lineup of informational articles about coffee in general. Of particular note is George Howell’s “The Long Road To Coffee Quality”, a series of articles that he has been writing and publishing in the company’s weekly newsletter.
The company’s mission is clearly inspired by equal parts education and evangelism, and after looking at Howell’s coffee-industry history this is no surprise. After discovering high-quality coffee in northern California in the 1970’s, Howell moved to Boston and started the Coffee Connection, a series of coffee shops throughout New England. At the time (this is pre-Starbucks) the product that Coffee Connection was offering was wholly unique, and the company gradually became pretty successful. In fact, I remember a Coffee Connection in the town I went to college in, and distinctly remember that the coffee it served was easily the best in town.
In the mid-1990’s Howell sold the Coffee Connection to the green giant, Starbucks. Part of the sale included a no-complete clause that Howell had to abide by for several years, and so his role in the specialty-coffee industry changed at this point. He worked as a consultant to coffee growers and governments, and established the Cup of Excellence, a series of annual award competitions for coffee industries in Latin America, South America, and Africa.
And then in 2004, after the no-compete clause had expired and Cup of Excellence was finding success, he founded Terroir Coffee with the mission of recognizing the “fundamental role and identity [of coffee growers] in the production of high quality coffees”. Today, the company offers coffees from 10 different countries, each identified with a specific producer.
Last Spring and Summer I tried a number of their coffees, and enjoyed them all to some extent. But the reality is that I wasn’t ready for these coffees. They were all generally light-to-medium roasts, and given that most of the coffees I drank at that time were dark roasts, I wasn’t prepared for the bright acidity that was such a feature of the Terroir coffees. It really wasn’t until I began drinking coffees such as this consistently that I got the hang of them and could both relate to and enjoy what was in the cup.
And so when I recently ran out of coffee at home, it seemed like the perfect time to give Terroir Coffee a chance once again. Luckily, a coffee shop near our house is supplied by Terroir and sells some of their coffees in 12oz. bags. So, while the coffee is not the freshest (this bag was roasted in late March), I at least know that it’s been taken care of since having been roasted.
Ademe Bedane is a privately-owned washing station in the Sidamo region of Ethiopia, adjacent to the more famous Yirgacheffe region. The washing station buys coffee cherries from the local farmers and processes them using the washed method. The cherries, which were harvested in December and January, are all grown between 5000-6000 feet above sea level and are made up of a number of local varieties.
The nose has light scents of red fruits layered over a deep base of creamy milk chocolate. The palate is intriguingly earthy, with almonds, walnuts, and maple syrup. As the coffee cooled the palate became more expressive, with melons and berries coming into the mix. The texture is very soft and velvety, with lightly prickling acidity. The finish has a distinctly nutty acidity and an intriguing grapey sweet note crops up, almost cognac-like.
This coffee certainly confirmed my past experiences with Terroir in that it was delicate and complex, and definitely took some time to get to know. I was probably halfway through the bag before I really felt like I was able to fully enjoy the coffee. But it was fun wrapping my head, and taste buds, around this coffee. I’d like to go back and taste other coffees from Terroir, especially now that I am firmly in the grip of an African-coffee extravaganza*. Next time I will definitely order direct, just to ensure that I’m getting a chance to try them at their freshest best.
*Stay tuned, three bags of coffee from Stumptown just arrived on my doorstep, two from Rwandan and one from Burundi. I can’t wait!
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Stumptown Coffee Roasters Kenya Gaturiri Reserve
Kenyan coffee represents a difficult and sad contradiction. The country is renowned for producing some of the finest coffees in the world. Roasters across the spectrum cite Kenyan coffee as embodying the perfect confluence of geography, varietals, and well-honed and effective processing methods. Yet the country’s auction system which can effectively pay top dollars to well-deserving, quality coffees is also renowned for the poor management and corruption that frequently result in the actual producers – the farmers themselves – receiving little of this money. As a result, while the country’s coffees can be excellent, the farmers struggle to make a living and maintain their communities.
So it is notable that this is Stumptown’s first ever East African Direct Trade coffee. Their website explains that “to be able to guarantee such a phenomenal price to the association members of Gaturiri…is the first step towards transparent coffee business in Kenya.” This direct relationship is the result of the opening of what is called the “Second Window”. In November of 2006 the Kenyan government authorized legislation which allowed farmers to pursue relationships with agents outside of the auction system. While this “Second Window” legislation has raised many questions about its efficacy in improving farmers’ options for selling their coffee, roasters such as Stumptown and Intelligentsia have begun introducing new Kenyan coffees that are indeed the result of more direct relationships with farmers than they had been able to before. As part of these relationships the roasters are guaranteeing premium prices to the cooperatives and farmers they are working with, striving to achieve optimal financial transparency and to ensure that the farmers receive their due share of the prices paid, and working closely with both farmers and cooperatives to promote and enable ideal and sustainable agriculture and processing methods. Two years after the passing of the new legislation, these relationships forged by prominent roasters may be the first steps in improving both the quality of Kenyan coffee (which was already very good) and the economic life of the farmers who produce it.
Check out this article for more information on the “Second Window” legislation.
This Gaturiri Reserve was produced in East Africa by the members of the Gaturiri washing station that is part of the Barichu Cooperative in the Central Kenyan Highlands. The coffee was raised at an altitude of 1700-1800 meters, and features the two common Kenyan varietals SL28 and SL34. The “SL” stands for Scot Laboratories where the varietals were first developed. In the 1930’s this lab conducted cross-breeding of a number of different varieties in search of high-quality, high-yield, and disease resistant strains. SL28 and SL34 were both results of this work. SL28 is known for high-quality but fairly small yields, and producing an intensely citric, sweet, and balanced cup. SL34 is best known for producing high-quality coffee at medium-to-high altitudes, complex citric acidity, heavy mouthfeel and clean, sweet finish. The coffee is wet-processed, and after being washed the beans are transferred to drying tables.
The roast is fairly light, yet again disproving the persistent myth that all West coast coffees are darkly roasted. The nose gives off scents of milk chocolate, hazelnuts, and salted caramel. The palate has pine nuts, malted milk balls, ancho peppers, caramel, cedar, and blackberries. The texture is plush and rich with an easy-drinking soft acidity. The finish is dry, minty and nutty and medium-length.
A very nice coffee from Stumptown. Not as compelling as the Ethiopian coffee that I had from them recently, or some of the other Kenyan coffees, but very enjoyable and easy to drink. The lush texture and low acidity make this a good cup of coffee for anytime of day, and I suspect that it’d be appealing to a broad range of palates.
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Gimme! Coffee Rwanda Bourbon Bufcafe
Recently I’ve been strongly drawn to coffees from Rwanda. It all started last summer when I tried a Rwandan coffee from Barrington Coffee that exhibited a remarkable depth of flavor and nuance along with such a supple texture that it made for just wonderfully easy drinking. I later had the opportunity to try another Rwandan coffee from Counter Culture, and while not being as impressed as with the one from Barrington Coffee, I certainly found it to be a great cup of coffee. What ultimately intrigued me the most was the general scarcity of Rwandan coffee from specialty coffee roasters. Most roasters simply weren’t offering Rwandan coffees at the time I was looking for them.
It turns out that the reason for this was twofold. First, coffee is harvested in Rwanda in the fall, meaning that the coffees will ideally be arriving at roasters’ doorsteps in November or December. So my timing was bad, as this was early fall that I was looking. Secondly, the specialty coffee industry in Rwanda is still in its nascent form as farmers slowly improve their agricultural and processing methods, and trade-routes are gradually worked out that will allow the coffee to reach specialty roasters in the US. Thus, the available quantity of the better coffees is pretty limited.
So in sum, this all adds up to limited availability of some very fine coffees. Naturally, when Gimme! began selling the Rwanda Bourbon Bufcafe, I jumped at the chance to pick up a pound. The combination of one of my favorite roasters and the coffee that won the recent Golden Cup Award in Rwanda seemed like a match made in heaven.
The Bufcafe Cooperative is made up of about 3000 farmers who each tend roughly 200 trees on average. Very small-scale coffee growing that places a huge emphasis on the role of the cooperative in enabling the coffee to achieve excellence. Recent years’ coffee premiums paid by specialty roasters enabled the Bufcafe’s mill owner to reinvest in the facilities, improving the quality of the coffee they were producing as well as their environmental impact. The result of the improvements there and in the field resulted in the cooperative winning the coveted Golden Cup, the country’s annual coffee competition.
This pound of coffee came from the same lot that the cooperative’s Golden Cup-winning entry came from. By the time I got my hands on it, it had been roasted about 1.5 weeks earlier. The beans are wet-processed using fully-washed method and are 100% grade AA bourbon varietal. The trees are all grown between 5500-6200 feet in 30% volcanic soil in the Nyamasabe District in the Butare region of Rwanda.
The nose is a unique mix of compelling aromas: cedar, cocoa, apple orchards, orange peel, unripe pears, and toasted bread. The palate conveys strong notes of caramel and dark chocolate, interestingly without the sweetness these flavors would normally carry. Faint traces of red fruit, roasted nuts, and menthol skirt around the edges. The palate is very dry, with a warming, silky texture. On the finish there are flavors of anise and blueberries that rise to the top alongside hints of fresh mint and menthol.
This was definitely another stellar Rwandan coffee. I struggled with it initially though, and it took me several cups to get the amount of grounds and steeping time right. The normal amount of grounds that I use produced a too-strong coffee, so I had to dial back to get everything just right. In the end, it was well worth the tinkering…I’ll be a bit sad when I drink the last cup from this pound of beans.
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Barrington Coffee Ethiopia Sidamo Korate Natural 2008
Along with Kenya, Ethiopia is the African country whose coffees you’re most likely to find being offered in quantity from specialty roasters in the U.S. Ethiopia is the birthplace of the Arabica bean and its coffees are considered to be some of the most exotic and unique in the world. Because the coffee trees have been both cultivated and have grown wild for so long in Ethiopia, the process of selection has long since been completed with the result being varietals that are ideally suited to the climate and geography of the country’s coffee-growing regions.
What sets the coffees of Ethiopia apart from one another is a) the regions in which they are grown, and b) the method used for milling the coffee beans.
There are several coffee growing regions, with Harrar, Sidamo, and Yirgacheffe (which is actually a sub-region of Sidamo) the most prominent in terms of quality. Roasters rate the Yirgacheffe most highly, using compliments such as “no other coffee in the world has its perfumed, sweet, lemon-apricot aroma” (Terroir Coffee), “Ethiopia coffees are among the world’s most varied and distinctive, and at least one, Yirgacheffe, ranks among the very finest”, (Coffee Review), and “Yirgacheffe reaches higher and sails farther on the palate than [Sidamo]” (Intelligentsia). Yirgacheffe is a sort of coffee parallel to an Italian DOCG within a larger DOC growing zone – e.g the Barolo DOCG within the Langhe DOC zone – a subzone that has been identified over the course of time as producing a product superlative to the surrounding area in which it resides.
But alongside the region in which the coffee is grown, the method for processing it has a huge effect on the finished coffee bean. There are basically two methods commonly employed in Ethiopia: wet- and dry-processing. The methods produce two distinctly different finished coffees, and tend to be employed on a regional basis with most Yirgacheffe coffees wet-processed and most from Harrar dry-processed (coffees from Sidamo using both methods). The majority of the finest coffee cherries are sent to mills for wet-processing where it is prepared using the most modern methods available in the country. This guarantees a coffee that is bright and fresh in the cup, and preserves the delicate and floral aromas and complex flavors so highly prized by roasters. Dry-processing on the other hand involves laying the cherries out on elevated tables to dry in the sun with the coffee bean being extracted once the cherry has fully dried. The result is a coffee with a more lush fruit character and complex and slightly fermented flavors.
This Ethiopia Sidamo from Barrington Coffee continues the run of very good coffees that I’ve had from them recently, right alongside the Colombian that I recently tried. They don’t give much information on their website, although slightly more on the package than I’ve normally seen from them. The package shows the name of the coffee as “Ethiopia Sidamo Korate Natural 2008″. Unfortunately, neither the package nor the website explains what “Korate” means, so I’m assuming this to be the name of the cooperative. I’m also assuming that 2008 simply indicates the vintage that the beans are from. So the degree of information Barrington Coffee gives for this coffee is a bit mixed. I’m glad they indicate the cooperative, method (“Natural”) and vintage – especially the vintage as this is actually pretty unusual for anyone to indicate on their packaging. But the fact that they don’t state anywhere exactly what “Korate” stands for is somewhat disappointing.
Other sources that I’ve found indicate that the coffee was growing between 1850-2100 meters in the Dara Woreda district of the Sidamo region. I haven’t been able to find an indication of what variety (or varieties) this is, or still what “Korate” stands for.
Nonetheless, the coffee is one of the more outstanding that I’ve had recently. The first thing that strikes you is the aroma from the beans themselves: vivid blueberry aromas leap out of the bag and from the freshly ground beans. The aroma of the brewed coffee has vivid notes of fresh blueberry cake and whipped cream. The blueberry flavors continue on the palate, accompanied by a mix of red fruits, cherries and raspberries, a hint of 60% dark chocolate, and a distinct thread of citrus flavors. The palate has a creamy texture that serves as a great backdrop for this array of flavors. The berry notes continue through a strong finish accompanied by a hint of hot chocolate.
This coffee reminds me very much of some of the Rwandan coffees that I’ve had and have enjoyed so much. The coffees from both regions that I’ve tried have been lushly bodied and expressed vivid, deep flavors of red berries and fruits, particularly blueberries and cherries with an almost wine-like complexity.
As I keep pondering the relationship between coffee and terroir and wondering what relationships and common characteristics exist among coffees from different regions, I can’t help but find this commonality inspiring. It would be great if Barrington came out with a Rwandan coffee so that I’d have a chance to see if they employ a similar roast profile for that region’s coffees and produce a similar result. I’ve been disappointed in finding that the relationships between terroir and coffee have been almost completely unexplored in any significant way, and believe that my experiences with coffees from these two regions of Africa is a clear indication this is indeed an topic that could be fruitfully explored by someone with the knowledge and inspiration.
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Counter Culture Coffee Humure-Byumba Rwanda
This past summer I was fortunate to be given a pound of Rwandan coffee from Barrington Coffee Roasters. I was immediately impressed by its deft combination of fruit and depth. Since then, I’ve kept my eyes open for Rwandan coffees from the various roasters that I generally keep tabs on (Intelligentsia, Terroir, Gimme!, and Stumptown to a lesser extent). Vary rarely have any of them offered coffees from Rwanda, leading to the impression that these are somewhat rare coffees for them to get their hands on. Or, and this is probably the more correct answer, the timing of my looking was simply not right. Rwandan coffees are harvested in the summer, and so will generally make their way to the market several months after that. So theoretically, it should be right about now that they start to appear in roasters’ portfolios.
So I was thusly pretty excited when we got a pound of Counter Culture’s Rwandan coffee as a Christmas gift. Counter Culture is a roaster who I’m pretty interested in and have not yet had the chance to try any of their coffees. From what I’ve seen and read, they have a great reputation for working closely with farmers to establish good working relationships, and they produce some great roasted coffees. The Christmas gift included two pounds of their coffee, the Rwandan and a Kenyan micro-lot, both very exciting looking. But it was the Rwandan that I was the most excited about, and I could hardly resist the temptation to dive right in and brew a cup of it.
This coffee is produced by farmers in the Humure community, located in the Byumba province. A washing station was built in this community recently as part of the PEARL project (http://www.rwandacoffeepals.com/pearlproject.php), an effort aimed at improving the lives of Rwandan farmers through agriculture-based initiatives. The washing stations have been built throughout Rwanda, and are credited by people such as Peter Guiliano of Counter Culture and George Howell of Terroir Coffee with having led to the vast improvement in the quality of Rwandan coffee.
Counter Culture gives this data regarding its production:
- Varietal: French Mission Bourbon
- Altitude: 1700-2000 meters
- Harvest: Summer
If this coffee is any indication, their right on the money. This is a great coffee. It has lots of depth to the flavors, the mouthfeel is fabulous, and the coffee’s weight is well balanced with its flavors.
The nose is interesting, with notes of blueberry, walnut, anise, and something almost minty. The palate is very softly textured, with a creamy sweetness to it. Delicate flavors of caramel and cocoa stand out, but in general this is a very dry coffee, not overly sweet. Finish has a slight flavor of mushrooms (in a good way) accompanied by nutmeg and cocoa. Like I said, this coffee is very nicely balanced and is very easy to drink on a coldish winter day.
An email newsletter that I just received from Terroir Coffee indicated that they recently received their Rwandan coffees and will be roasting them in mid-January. That sounds pretty exciting, and I may try to snap up a pound of that. Something to look forward too!
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