Monday, November 03, 2003


our friends & colombia

an interesting article today on the effort of colombia to market its high-quality specialty coffee, and not just the juan valdez variety.

what i love about it is that it quotes all our friends and personal deities: ted lingle of the scaa; the goddess lindsay of green mountain; larry of batdorf, who makes mr. right's favorite dancing goats blend; and i suspect the last unnamed source to be steve colten of atlantic.

i'm not too fond of colombian coffees personally, but i had some narino last year that was pretty good, i thought. but it's just too bright for me.

the situation in colombia, long-time readers know, has interested me because it's a great case where you can see the rubber really hit the road in the world-price depression known as the coffee crisis.

the energetic president uribe, himself a yoga student, from a coffee family and a victim of the unrest, took office with some interesting plans to tackle the crisis internationally and locally.

of course many of these are realizing more slowly than he had hoped; the world has high inertia sometimes!

let's hope he can get more done before his time and momentum run out. i thought he alone of the latin coffee leaders showed insight when he proposed creating a global chain of juan valdez coffeeshops to rival starbucks, for example. . .

he appeared to understand that only 2 people can solve the coffee crisis: the farmer and the consumer. farmers have to grow less coffee, and that coffee has to be of higher quality.

consumers will appreciate good coffee; they just have to be able to go some place to taste it and then become more educated. (you can take this step yourself by becoming an scaa consumer member and beginning to make higher quality coffee at home!)

uribe seems to comprehend that the goal of all the people in the middle -- the national coffee boards, the importers, the roasters, the giant development agencies, etc. etc. -- has to be to facilitate this meeting of farmer and educated consumer.

finally, for the 4 people who are interested, here are pix of the new grading room at the exchange. this is where the pro cuppers do their serious business of judging coffees on the basis of quality standards.

they had a nice opening ceremony featuring many famous cuppers, present and retired. . .

posted by fortune | 7:58 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments