a coffee primer

Each year, the world consumes over 19 billion pounds of raw, green coffee. Although unroasted beans can be blueish or veer toward yellow, we in the coffee industry refer to all raw, unroasted beans as “green.” Considering coffee drinkers in the USA consume approximately 400 million cups of brewed coffee per day, it’s amazing just how little the consuming public knows about the beans that make up those cups. With the hopes of educating consumers, wine comparisons abound in the coffee industry; I’m not certain this helps the coffee industry as a whole, but it does at the very least help those who know wine, better understand coffee.

For starters, a coffee bean is actually a seed, that comes from a fruit (often referred to as a cherry), that starts as a flower on an evergreen shrub or tree. Coffee is an agricultural product, the majority of which is traded on organized commodity exchanges, just like orange juice, pork bellies, and oil.

Coffee shrubs thrive in the equatorial swath between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Unlike wine, a majority of the best coffees are grown in some of the poorest areas of the world. And many of these areas are riddled with political strife, economic hardship, or armed guerrillas. However, exceptions to all of these generalities can be found, the most extreme being in The United States, California and Florida in particular.

Like those tending a vineyard, coffee farmers are at the mercy of nature when it comes to the timing and quantity of rainfall and sunshine. No two harvests are the same, and as such, differences are reflected in the quantity and/or quality of the fruit (and hence the raw, green seed). In addition, coffee farmers are also at the mercy of an oft times whimsical commodity market which spikes or drops with predictions of drought or flood, news of infestation, fungal damage, early bloom, or a bumper crop in a coffee growing country halfway around the world from where they live. Political strife in distant countries and tariff negotiations also contribute to the whims of a commodity market. And often the price of green coffee gets entangled in the volatility of hedge funds, mutual funds and other financial institutions which pour money into commodity coffee with the hopes of outpacing returns on other investment options.

For all intents and purposes, of the over 130 species of coffee, the top 3 discussed are arabica, robusta and liberica. Only arabica and robusta are of global economic significance, making up the overwhelming majority of coffee consumed around the world (approximately 60% arabica and 40% robusta). Many cultures prefer the sharp, slate-like minerality of the more highly caffeinated robusta bean in their coffee beverage, but it is arabica that is preferred by traditional coffee drinkers and true coffee professionals. However, there is movement underfoot to elevate robusta to the level of a noble fruit (only you oenophiles would appreciate that reference!). Arabica coffee is typically more expensive than robusta, we’ll address a few reasons why later in this article.

A coffee shrub’s height is dependent on several variables; including species, variety, pruning method and growing conditions. Mechanically harvested plants can reach upwards of 25 feet. Hand harvested plants tend to be much shorter than those mechanically harvested. Being more of a shrub and lacking tendrils, trellising is not a typical practice.

Unlike robusta, arabica coffee is more difficult to grow due to its susceptibility to fungus and infestation. And quality arabica coffee plants prefer higher altitudes, with warm days and cool nights that stress the shrub, and ultimately produce lower yields. Just like grapes grown for wine, lower yielding shrubs are usually indicative of more intense and complex flavors. To gain the advantages of altitude, some of the world’s greatest arabica coffees are planted on steep, mountainous terrains. I have seen fields in Colombia so steep, pickers utilize harnesses and belays to safely pick the coffee fruit and maneuver the farm’s terrain. One arabica shrub produces approximately one pound of quality coffee per year.

There are hundreds of varieties of coffee fruit, just as there are varietals of grapes for wine (varietals being the scientifically incorrect, yet the preferred word among oenophiles). The difference between arabicas SL28 and Gesha are as distinct as Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. Terroir has entered the American vernacular thanks to wine, but terroir is equally at play with coffee, if not more so. From country to country, to varying altitudes, to individual farms, terroir plays a heavy hand in the potential flavor of a specific coffee. But nothing, and we mean nothing, affects a bean’s flavor more than the processing of the cherry; the process of stripping the fruit and drying the seeds. Processing plays the heaviest hand in a coffee’s flavor; Italian Super Tuscans are the perfect wine analogy.

To date, over 800 volatile aromatic compounds have been found in coffee, more than double those found in wine. When it comes to describing flavor, coffee took its cue from wine when the Specialty Coffee Association (aka the SCA) released its inaugural Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel in 1995. Like the wine wheel, the center of the coffee wheel begins generally, with something like fruity, that leads you outward to more descriptive choices such as citrus, and then to more specific options further out which terminate with lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit. Having come from a background in wine, I found the coffee wheel’s use of winey a bit odd; never fully resonating with me. On a related note, twenty years later, the coffee wheel was heavily revised in 2016 (for the record, winey is still utilized).

As a side note, when I started tasting coffee professionally, I came to realize the UC Davis wine wheel fell short. In particular, when working one’s way toward the outer description of woody to burned, coffee becomes a final option. Using coffee to describe a wine now feels way too vague, grossly inadequate as a descriptor. Which coffee species? Which variety? How processed? And grown where? A descriptor of coffee is the beginning of an entirely new adventure.

The industry refers to the coffee fruit as a cherry. The coffee cherry is oblong, about the size of a large, peanut M&M. Some cherries are smaller or larger, depending on variety and growing conditions. The flavor of the fruit varies with each variety, but I find the flavors of persimmon and passion fruit to be quite common. Each cherry typically contains two seeds nestled within the fruit, flat sides facing each other. Some cherries contain one seed, some three. The single seeds are rounded, called peaberries, and are quite noticeable if you purchase a roasted, whole bean bag. Some say a peaberry’s flavor is more intense, and some claim they roast more evenly, neither of which has been proven scientifically. However, the latter has some sense to it.

Coffee cherries grow in tight clusters, but are picked individually. The cherries grow closely to the branch, with the cluster lacking the single stem typical of grapes. Most varieties of coffee cherry are red when ripe, however orange and yellow are ripe colors for other varieties (think red and white grapes). Unlike grapes, individual cherries in the same cluster ripen at different times, often weeks apart. In fact, ripe, underripe, overripe, and flowers can often be seen at the same time on a single shrub. High quality coffees require manual laborers to make several passes of the same shrub. With each pass, quality minded pickers select only the ripest of cherries from each cluster. Machinery is typically utilized when harvesting lower quality coffees, for machine harvesters pick the good, bad and the ugly in one fell swoop. Often times additional manual labor or machinery such as mechanical or optical sorters are later used to improve the quality of the harvest.

For just a few dollars one can experience the terroir of a farm halfway around the globe (and for well under a dollar if you brew your own). When I find myself drinking a particularly good cup of coffee, I am nothing less than in awe of how these seeds from distant lands made their way into my hands, coming together in my mug, transforming my simple cup-o-joe into something truly worthy of wonder. Not unlike a fine wine experience.