Seminar-Coffee Terroir

Tonight we are going to talk about coffee terroir.  Terroir is often used to describe wine, but it can also be used for coffee. “Terroir” comes from the French word “terre,” which translates to “ground,” “earth” or “land.” It encompasses all environmental conditions that affect the final beverage’s taste. We are also going to taste a lot of coffee, five different coffees actually.  Three of them will be non-Starbucks coffees.

I am including four non-Starbucks coffees for a couple reasons: these are coffees we don’t usually taste, we should educate our palate, and compare the taste of other coffees to what we are used to. Some say that Starbucks burns their beans in the roasting process. I have thought about this a great deal, as I don’t agree with that statement.  I also checked a number of independent evaluations of Starbucks coffees.  I  don’t taste this burnt taste, especially with medium roast,  a Verona, all the Single Origins and the Reserves.  Roasting coffee is both a science and an art.  The longer a bean is roasted the more the flavor will be from the roasting and not the country of origin.  That’s why the Reserves are all usually medium roast.  French roast at the extreme end of the roast spectrum is roasted to an internal temperature of 240C.  At 250C the body of the bean is thin and the taste is characterized by flavors of charcoal and tar. Also at this temperature the beans are in danger of catching on fire.

 Starbucks roasts a lot of beans. Actually 308 billion beans every year.  That works out to 88 million pounds of coffee beans.  Consistent taste is paramount, when you order a tall Verona in Victoria, it tastes exactly the same in Miami, in Tokyo and in Melbourne Australia.  Also that consistent taste must be true over numerous growing seasons.  That’s why our core blends are blends and not single origins.  A growing season has unique factors. Often a coffee will taste different from year to year.  A good example is the Jamaica Blue Mountain. Last year it wasn’t very good and this year while its still not good it is a little better.

The coffees we are going to taste this evening are as follows;  The Single Origin Papua New Guinea Highlands, the Reserve California Estate, Sulawesi Toraja, Monsoon Mallabar from India and Ethiopia Yirgacheffe from the Adame Garbota Cooperative in the Gedeo region of Ethiopia. 

We are going to brew these coffees using five different brew methods.  The V60, the Chemix, the Pour Over, the French Press,and the Aeropress .  We wont be using the Clover as I want to showcase as many brewing methods as possible.  And besides its too easy.

So, lets get back to terroir, coffee terroir specifically. As I said at the beginning terroir are all the environmental conditions that influence a beverages final taste For coffee, these include things like:

soil

annual rainfall

average temperature

amount of sunlight/amount of shade

elevation.

Even less-discussed factors like the nearby flora and fauna are included in a coffee’s terroir.

Because terroir is created by a region’s environmental factors, it’s unique to each region. Terroir is the reason why a coffee from Kenya won’t taste like one from Brazil, and neither would show the qualities that Sumatra is known for. All of these countries, and the regions within them, have different growing conditions, so their coffees have distinct terroirs.

Even the same region’s terroir may be different from one year to the next. For example, an abnormally dry or wet growing season could significantly impact how that year’s coffee matures, which would, in turn, impact how brews made from those coffee beans taste. Since rainfall is an environmental factor, it is part of the terroir, and these changes would fall within the term’s scope.

Terroir also can’t be replicated in a lab setting. So many factors influence a region’s terroir that it’s impractical, if not impossible, to exactly replicate them in a controlled experiment. Scientists may be able to isolate one or a few variables, but they can’t create truly identical growing conditions.

For all its importance, terroir is just one factor that affects a coffee’s final taste. Processing and roasting also significantly affect how a coffee tastes, as does brewing. Both processing and roasting, especially, can significantly impact how much the terroir of a coffee is emphasized or deemphasized.

Place has long been held as virtually as significant an element of winemaking as grape variety and processing: When we think of Burgundy, say, or Champagne, we think as much of the land itself as we do the famed liquid that come from there. The two are virtually inseparable. Does the same hold true, however, in coffee?

We know that climate can and does play a major role in the development of the coffee plant and the flavors its seeds (or beans) express. Beside simply the soil type and health in a region or on a farm, the plants are also potentially affected by their access to water, whether they grow in sunlight or shade, aggressiveness and type of pruning, and the flora and fauna around them. These things, in turn, will influence a coffee producer's decisions about processing: When and how the coffee fruit is removed from its seed, whether or not there will be a fermentation period, and if that fermentation happens in the open air or under water—among myriad other choices.

The question is, then, does terroir so significantly impact the flavor of a coffee that the same variety grown in two different soils will be distinct enough to the discerning taster?

It is seemingly impossible to answer definitively, because it's exceptionally difficult to re-create non-terroir-related conditions enough among coffee producers to really compare. However, tasting the same varieties of coffees from neighboring farms  does yield interesting discoveries.

Is the sweetness of  one coffee caused by the meticulously ripe picking that a farm staff concentrate on, or is it due to some quality in the farm's soil? Is the fruity pucker of a Bourbon  caused by a different strain of wild yeast present during fermentation, even though the farm shares the volcanic mountainside microclimate with other farms.

Is this what makes Hacienda la Esmeralda's Geisha coffee taste the way it does, the farm itself?

A prime example of the terroir vs. variety vs. processing debate comes to play in the story of Geisha, an heirloom type of coffee native to the area around the Ethiopian town of  (Gesha), whose plant's descendants have found themselves rooted in soil in Honduras and, most famously, Panama, among other places. What's remarkable about the Geisha variety is that it does, in fact, taste nothing like a coffee from Honduras or Panama, and everything like a coffee from Ethiopia: Soft, delicate, intensely floral, with lemongrass and green- or black-tea-like characteristics that caused those first tasting it to wonder if they'd been duped.

Would a Geisha planted, say, in Brazil have the same characteristics, though? What about Sumatra? How close does the climate need to be in order to transfer the qualities of the variety from one plot of land to another? Or is there something else at play here?

Usually, changes in terroir seem to bring about great changes in the plants themselves: Moving a variety from a lush, green clime to a more arid one usually does cause distinct changes in the cup profile, and many subvarities have been born through natural mutation likely spawned by transplanting. Additionally, in many growing regions, producers follow generally similar processing practices that will impart specific flavors to the coffees grown there, which we might associate with location but in fact relates more to technique than topsoil.

“Terroir in coffee typically alludes to a selection of country, region, variety, altitude, crop cycle, soil, weather, and processing.  Terroir for coffee is the accumulative effect origin.”

All the specifics from origin come into play with terroir. The Brazilian Córrego Lavrinhas coffee is grown at 900 meters, which in a vacuum could imply lower quality, however with the unique micro-climate, it doesn’t truly represent what to expect from a lower altitude coffee.

When you compare two coffees it brings up even more questions. The two coffees are grown on farms located 2km apart, they are produced by the same farmer and processed at the same mill, yet regardless of the proximity and producing similarities, they’re quite far apart in taste.

“Vendeval means weather where it’s windy and misty rain… that kind of storm that’s not full rain, but not just mist, that very specific light rain. It gets the two weather systems colliding right where it’s from the Atlantic and the Pacific. It gets this very different weather at the top of the mountain, because there’s a little bit of influence from the other side, which is the last break before it’s just in the Atlantic side. Guatemala, my second favorite coffee country is a good example of this. Guatemala has seven separate and distinct coffee regions. Each has unique weather systems.  Our core Guatemala Antigua coffee is grown in the south west part of the country, which is heavily influenced by the Pacific Ocean, The Reserve Yaxbatz is grown in the eastern region, in a region which features the heaviest rainfall, it is also influenced by the Atlantic Ocean, Huehuetenango is grown in a region bordering Mexico and is heavily influenced by the  hot and dry winds of Mexico’s Tehuantepec plain.

Terroir,  is too particular to be meaningful on the level of country. Countries are just too variable in geography and climate to be thought of singularly. For example, Brazil—one of the world’s largest coffee producers—contains rainforests, mountains, grasslands, and swamps.  In fact, terroir is so specific that even narrower parameters like climate or geography are shaky. Terroir is microclimate: altitude, soil quality, temperature, humidity, access to sunlight. Slight modifications to any of these variables will affect the eventual profile of the coffee, even when coffee plants of the same species are grown on the same farm, in the same region, in the same country.

Its not just about space, its also about time. Changes in weather over the course of a year, or from year to year, can have a huge effect on coffee’s flavor. Everything can be perfect as far as processing and roasting but as far as this time next year, what that’s gonna taste like, that’s a different story.

Does this mean that geography is a useless way of thinking about coffee? Not exactly. Generally, there are discernible differences between coffee beans from various regions—but they’re very broad. “African coffees tend to be light in body, but they’re bright. Latin American coffee tends to fall between Asian coffee and Indonesian and Indian coffee, which tend to be full in body and light in acidity.

You certainly are going to find, very generally speaking, a certain kind of flavor in East Africa, certainly Ethiopia. You’re going to  find a certain flavor in India, in southeast Asia. That’s not in anyone’s imagination, those are real differences.

To find coffee that you like on its own terms, it’s best to ignore country of origin and instead educate yourself about the different flavor profiles coffee can have. This may seem shortsighted considering how many processes occur before coffee reaches you—growing,  picking, processing, bagging, shipping, roasting, grinding, then brewing—but it’s precisely how roasters hone in on what flavors a particular terroir has produced.

By identifying which of these flavors you prefer in your coffee, you can discover what kind of coffee you really like, and learn why particular regions produce such distinct flavors (thus learning more about those places in the process). You’ll ascertain the differences between roasts, you’ll glean which flavors you dislike  and you’ll be able to get your fill even when your preferred cultivar is out of season or when you find yourself at a new coffee shop.

This will probably feel like a relinquishing of power if you’re already convinced that you know, definitively, how you like your coffee and where that coffee comes from. But it’s really a refinement. It’s preposterous to take a phrase like Ethiopian coffee seriously when Ethiopia is over 426,000 square miles and contains volcanoes and floodplains and highlands—all of which can accommodate coffee plants. A true appreciator of coffee terroir would locate that one hectare of land that speaks to you and, while you can, appreciate it. It might not be around next year.