By Ari Weinzweig

The Complexity of Getting a Great Cup of Coffee
The truth is that tea is my first language and it’s pretty safe to say that it always will be. But everything changed for me when we started Zingerman’s Coffee Company in 2003.  As in every Zingerman’s business, getting to know our suppliers is an important (and usually really fun) part of bringing great food back to Ann Arbor. Among our favorites in the coffee world are the folks at the Daterra Estate in Brazil from whom we buy the green beans we roast here for our espresso (and a few other of our fantastic coffees).

The Beans in Brazil
The Daterra farm project dates back to the 1980s. Having made it financially through many decades of super-successful work in the tire industry, the De Paschoal family decided that they wanted to build a new business, one that would be more ecologically and socially sustainable than rubber. They gave themselves the assignment of finding something that was unique to Brazil, a business that would help their country, its people, and its amazing environment. They settled on coffee, and 18 years ago began the work to build what is now Daterra, a positive, cooperative and caring community in an industry—coffee—that’s not generally known for those sorts of things.

Environment
The name “Daterra” means “the earth” in Portuguese and, not surprisingly, a big push for Daterra right from the start was to do the right thing by the environment. They were the first coffee farm in Brazil to be Rainforest Alliance Certified. While they aren’t certified organic, they are working on some organic coffees for the future. When they do use chemicals they do so sparingly, putting down as little as they possibly can, and that only after looking at natural alternatives first. They have a huge composting project. They use the recycled water, solar heating, fertilize with the pulp and husks left from processing the coffee…all that stuff you’re supposed to do but so few folks really do.

Of the 17,000 acres on the farm, 7,000 are currently planted in coffee. The other 10,000 have been dedicated as a nature preserve for wild animals and trees that are native to this part of the Cerrado. They have a nursery on the farm where they work to grow indigenous trees and plants for use on the farmlands. They are also working to bring the native fauna back, and/or protect those that are still there. In laying out the farm, they actually blocked off corridors so that the animals can move freely and not have their rhythms set off by the coffee growing.

Technology
One of the simplest, but most important, of their innovations was the move to ship Daterra’s best coffees in sealed foil bags inside boxes, not in the old-style jute bags that everyone else has used religiously for centuries. “Usually in Brazil the families in the coffee business have been in it for hundreds of years. But we don’t come from a coffee family,” Isabela DePaschoal, daughter of the founder, explained. “Which means that we ask questions that other people don’t ask. We’re not scared of trying new things. So we started to ask about why do we ship in jute bags because the coffee in them is exposed to air and light. That’s when we came up with the idea of using the vacuum pack inside a cardboard box to protect the coffee.”  And, she’s right—the coffee does hold up much better and stays freer of off-aromas that can mar coffee stored in jute.

There are dozens of other examples as well. Special little carts that move the fresh coffee on the drying patios to facilitate more effective moisture evaporation. Daily postings of color-coded maps that show the level of ripeness of the coffee in that area and the state of the harvesting. Black-light inspection of the highest-grade coffees is used to identify defects in the structure of the dried beans, an idea originally employed by the blueberry industry, which has the same problem.

Buying Green, Roasting Brown, Drinking Black
As great as the work done at Daterra is, it would be worth little more than the inventory value of their product unless someone buys the green beans and then roasts them to make the coffee ready for brewing. Granted I’m biased, but I think Allen and Steve (managing partners at Zingerman’s Coffee Company) do both tasks really well. Buying and roasting is certainly no perfect science; there are something like 2,000 different flavor elements in a coffee bean, so I can’t imagine a formula that’s going to tell you exactly how to bring out the best in each bean. The skill of the roaster is basically to find and release the natural flavors that would otherwise remain locked inside the green (raw) beans. And Allen (as the Chief Bean Hound) has consistently impressed me with his ability to do this.

The best work in the world in growing, processing, selecting, and roasting can be completely ruined by bad brewing. This is particularly, especially, emphatically the case when it comes to espresso. To make it consistently great, the folks behind the bar have to taste regularly, then adjust the grind, the dose and the speed at which a shot is pulled to make sure that the espresso we serve is as superb as it should be.

So with that in mind, I want to pay tribute to the businesses that have been so diligent in doing the tasting and constant recalibrating that it takes to make great brewed coffee and espresso a reality:  The staff and management Next Door at the Deli, the Roadshow, and the bakeshop. Without their work, it’s clear that all of Daterra’s incredible effort, and the great roasting and selection work by Allen could easily be converted into one more mediocre little cup of coffee.

We’ve been loving the Pacamara that we get from Las Delicias in El Salvador ever since we brought it in to Zingerman’s Coffee Company last fall. I know El Salvador isn’t probably the first country folks think of when they think of big coffee producers but a lot of specialty roasters are getting really excited about what’s coming out of there these days. So, in February I traveled to El Salvador and visited the four main coffee growing/farming regions in the country to see what we can look forward to in the coming months and years.

Coffee was actually introduced to El Salvador in 1740 and a lot of the farms I visited date back to the mid-1800s and are being worked by fifth and sixth generations of the founding families. One thing I didn’t realize is that up until the early 1970s, El Salvador was the third largest coffee producer in the world. Decades of civil war devastated the coffee industry (and almost everything else there) but coffee is making a strong comeback. That’s not to say the road back has been easy. The 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck in January of 2001 caused widespread destruction, dealing a severe blow to the nation’s fragile economy. Coffee farmers there have to deal with extremely high winds that, on occasion, cause extensive damage to their crops. Volcanic eruptions, especially from the massive Santa Ana volcano in the far western part of the country, have left large swaths of land covered in ash at various points in the decade.

Okay, that’s the bad news. The good news is that the growers, led by the El Salvador Coffee Council, are staking their hopes for building a thriving coffee economy on establishing a reputation for growing superior beans. One thing they’ve definitely got going for them is the fact that El Salvador is known as a grower of heirloom varietals. Maybe more than anywhere else in this part of the coffee-growing world, El Salvador has been able to maintain the genetic distinctiveness of the beans they grow. Ironically, this was due, in part, to the civil war which effectively isolated the country economically for over a decade when growers in other coffee producing nations were reducing the diversity of their crops by switching to a limited set of higher-producing varietals.

By far, the dominant varietal in El Salvador is the Bourbon which makes up 68% of the crops. One of the most interesting beans (and one that’s getting a lot of attention, for good reason) in the specialty coffee world, is the Pacamara. This bean is a cross between the Pacas (native to El Salvador and one of the leading varietals after Bourbon) and the Maragogype which is distinguished by it’s HUGE size and full flavor. The resulting hybrid is a bit smaller than it’s mammoth cousin and is one of the most sought after beans on the market today.

My trip through El Salvador covered some of the major coffee growing regions beginning in the El Balsamo Mountain Range (not far from the capital San Salvador) where we visited the farm operated by the Aguilar family. Don Eugenia Aguilar is a fifth-generation coffee farmer who takes obvious pride in his coffee and in the fact the he provides education, housing and health care to the employees on his farm. Located on the northeast slope of the San Salvador volcano, his coffee grows at elevations between 3900 and 5200 feet. At his farm I took the opportunity to pick and eat fruit right off the tree. It was wonderfully sweet. Sweet you say? Yes, for those that may not be aware, the coffee bean is the seed of a cherry. The mucilage (or fruit) that surrounds the bean is not unlike a normal cherry. However, within the coffee cherry, the “pit” (or bean) is much larger so there is less fruit to “nosh on.” From the Aguilar’s, we visited farms in the Apaneca-Hamatepec mountain range and then moved on to the Alotepec Metapan region which, while not known for high yields, has produced more than it’s share of Cup of Excellence winners over the past few years (for more info see www.cupofexcellence.com).

One of the things that really struck me about these farmers was their dedication to traditional growing methods. Almost every farm we visited employed shade-growing (actually, 97% of coffee in the country is shade-grown), taking advantage of the frequent, strong winds that blow across the countryside. Shade growing favors the formation of microclimates, allowing beans to reach optimal ripeness and also helps to preserve wildlife and biodiversity. The strong winds allow the farmers to plant in shade knowing that the fruit will receive intermittent sunshine as the trees sway and let the light through. Farmers took this one step further, strategically pruning their trees to allow just the right amount of light through. Most harvesting in El Salvador is done between December and March. Typically, three passes through the farm are made (on a monthly basis) in order to pick the ripest fruit. Although it is hard to describe, the perfect ripeness of the cherry is achieved when it is maduro (Spanish for a dark burgundy red). It is very important for the color to be right as this will translate directly into the flavor of the cup. Interestingly, another technique used for determing whether the fruit was ready to pick was to take a cherry and squeeze it very carefully over the palm of the hand. If the fruit yielded 4-5 drops of juice, then it was ready for picking.

Another sign that things are looking up for El Salvador’s coffee is the fact that younger farmers are seeing an opportunity and staking their futures on coffee growing. In the past decade older farmers have been worried about the fact that the next generation didn’t seem to be interested in keeping the family farms going but I met a number of younger farmers on this visit who firmly believed that El Salvador has a bright future in coffee and selling really great tasting coffee has a lot to do with it.

We introduced our first Salvadoran coffee late last year and it was such a huge hit and we were so excited by the taste that we’re bringing it on as a regular bean in our lineup. To celebrate, we’re making the new crop Pacamara bean from the Las Delicias farm our Roaster’s Pick for March (see below) and carrying it regularly after that.

Keep on cupping!!
—Steve

We’re excited about a few African coffees:

Malawi “Mapanga”
This is one of those coffees that varies wildly from year to year and from processor to processor. One of our brokers who grew up in Africa offered us this coffee when it first became available, knowing how special it was. It took us a while to cup it, but when we did we frantically called back, hoping it wasn’t sold out.

We fell in love with it. It’s very full-bodied yet easy going. It has a pleasant lightly floral/herbal aroma. For me, the coffee had a very rich (almost buttery) mouthfeel, an light caramel note and a very clean finish. The combination of big body and crisp finish is fantastic.

After years of rebuilding (with help from a UN-funded project lead by a professor at MSU), Rwanda is producing many fine coffees. We’re in the process of sourcing the right one for us. Last year we liked one from a coffee in the district of Gikongoro which borders Burundi to the south.

We’re also hearing reports of good quality starting to emerge from Burundi. The East African Fine Coffee Association always exhibits at the SCAA conference. The coffee from Burundi has been good but hard to get due to the political climate. New UN programs should help this.