WATTS WORKS - FROM NICARAGUA TO EL SALVADOR

One of the most starkly disorienting juxtapositions one can experience while working in coffee can be had by making the short jump from Nicaragua to El Salvador. For the second year in a row I have gone directly from one country to the other, but the contrast is no less vivid to me for having seen it twice. Let me begin to explain what I mean by taking a short trip backwards in time...

Last May I flew to El Salvador for the 2nd annual Cup of Excellence (COE) competition. It was an excellent week of cupping, marked most memorably by another potent juxtaposition, the occasional Pacamara sample showing up on a table full of Bourbons. The two varietals are miles apart in character, Bourbons usually being the sweeter, fruitier, and more delicate of the two. The Pacamaras tend to be slightly more austere, with sharper acidity and pronounced floral notes. It can be a little bit jarring when you’ve just cupped twenty Bourbons in a row and then run spoon first into a cup of the Pacamara, and many jurors had to spend a little time acquainting themselves with the profile so that they could give it a fair shake on the cupping table. But I digress…

The competition was challenging for the jurors, not so much due to the contrast between varietals but rather due to the complexity and nuance of the Bourbons and the fact that most of the samples had been meticulously cared for post-harvest. Identifying the top eight or ten was relatively easy, but the next twenty were neck and neck from the start, and we needed to really dig in to separate the 84’s from the 83.5’s.

Immediately following the awards ceremony I headed to Nicaragua for their 3rd COE event. The differences were apparent from the very beginning. Most of the coffee grown in Nica is Caturra or Catuai, which are similar enough in the cup that I often group them as one. More importantly, the range of quality was far wider than what we had experienced in El Sal, making it a much simpler task to evaluate and identify the lots that deserved to be celebrated. In the final analysis, I do feel that the very top coffees from both countries can stand toe-to-toe with one another on the cupping table, although they are remarkably different in character.

Ripe coffee cherries on a branch.

Let’s return now to the present… Just two weeks ago I landed in Managua to spend a week working on coffees from the current harvest. The crop was early this year, and low…very low. Some producers estimated that they were about 40% down over last year’s crop. Forty percent!  That is a hugely significant number, especially considering that demand has increased for Nicaraguan coffees over 2004. The Jolly Green Goliath (a.k.a. the Mermaid, a.k.a. the biggest specialty coffee company on the planet) began buying there in earnest this year, albeit before the coffee “C” market made its recent rally upward to $1.00+ levels for the first time in 5 years! When you add it all up, it spells trouble, mostly for the exporters, who are faced with filling contracts for premium coffees fixed at levels at or below the current market prices for average quality coffee. It’s also a bitter irony that after years of battling low market prices, farmers finally face a harvest season with a semi-healthy C market, but the crop yield is 40% lower!  Where is the justice?

In any case, there are a number of reasons the crop is down. Late flowering last year and lack of adequate rainfall were a big part of it, and the five years of low worldwide prices have meant that many growers could not fertilize and maintain their farms as well as they would have liked to. Factor in that last year was a big crop (usually there is an up-down cycle from year to year), and you’ve got your 40% drop. The good news is that this situation puts the growers in the driver’s seat, as their bargaining position is much stronger than it has been in a long time.

The purpose of this trip was expressly to reconnect with the producers and millers who had been a part of Flor Azul in 2004 and to strategize for the current crop. It is my intention to see this mark flourish and improve each year, and to strengthen our relationship with the growers who are central to this project. There is nothing more gratifying to a coffee buyer than to spend time with the people who produced the very coffees that gave great delight to our palates all year long and to see how the partnership has made a real difference in the local community. We talked about the successes of last year, and about what we all envision for the future. Most of all we talked about the value of working together for a long, long time. The Flor Azul mark is one that is dear to me, not just because of the cup profile but because of the personalities involved at source. It is a personal goal of mine to create the means for raising extra money through the sale of Flor Azul this spring that can be sent back to Nicaragua to fund sorely needed infrastructure improvements in the areas from which the coffee comes. Look for details about this project in May, when Flor Azul 2005 becomes available!

But that’s not all. There is another exciting project afoot in Nica, this one involving a coffee with which some of you may already be familiar. I speak of the Los Delirios, our beloved organic coffee that handily won last years COE competition. There was a period between June and August where that coffee was my absolute favorite on our shelves, bar none. I traveled there with a good friend (Duane from Stumptown Coffee Roasters) in an effort to meet the producer, Senor Daniel Canales, and visit the place that had produced such a glorious coffee. The long and short of it is this: the farm was magnificent, and the Canales family were the kind of people with whom we love working. Very genuine, very meticulous, and very proud of the coffee they grow. This year, Stumptown and Intelligentsia, who collaborated in last year’s COE purchase, will be bringing back the Delirious to give you another chance to indulge. I’ll give you a lengthier account of this visit when the coffee arrives in May.

From Nica I flew directly to El Salvador, about a 1.5 hour trip all told. Within minutes of exiting the airport I was on my way to a coffee farm in Jayaque, La Libertad, yet another grower with whom I’ve connected through the Cup of Excellence competitions. I spent the night at El Carmel and won’t even try to describe the serenity of the place, as I know full-well that it is just one of those things you have to see for yourself.

The next day we spent some time on the farm, looking at the improvements over the previous year and enjoying the cool breeze that floats up the side of the mountain from the shores of the Pacific a short distance away. It was magnificent, in every regard. My only regret was that I couldn’t stay longer.

It was off to the mill at 9 am, and then up to another finca, the famous Montecarlos. I’ve mentioned that there was only one other coffee this summer that could really take my attention away from the Delirios for any length of time. That coffee, of course, was the glorious Pacamara peaberry lot produced by Carlos Batres of Finca Montecarlos. There were moments this summer, sitting on my porch with that coffee, when I really did wonder how a cup could possibly get any better. It was just pristine, as elegant a coffee as you’re likely to find on this earth. So it makes perfect sense that I would be here, looking to find that magic one more time.

We spent the day touring one side of the farm before retiring for the evening. The next day we took a few ATV’s and explored the other side, making it down to the mill that has been operating there since the late 1800’s. The place is absolutely steeped in tradition, and much of the original equipment is still there: belt driven gears, old clay water canals, and ancient scales that have been weighing things for much longer than I’ve been alive. It was wonderful, and the energy Sr. Batres has put into his farm is truly impressive.  Thinking about that peaberry lot as we drove up and down the side of the volcano, one thing became absolutely clear: The magic in that cup was neither an accident nor some lucky break. This was yet another example of a grower who put his heart and mind into producing quality and can reap the rewards.

After leaving Ahuachapan I headed back to Santa Ana to meet with friends Eduardo Alvarez (owner of the mill that put together Los Inmortales for me last year) and Guillermo Alvarez, of finca Malacara fame. We spent some time cupping the early harvest coffees, and then took advantage of the daylight to have lunch up at the farms and while away the late afternoon wandering among the coffee trees. The trees themselves were bursting with fruit, just days away from perfect ripeness. The actual harvest is starting now and will continue through the end of March. After the last cherry is plucked, the coffee will be cupped, which is the moment of truth, when a full year’s worth of effort by man and nature gives up the ultimate reward in the form of a mouthwatering coffee. I only wish the trees could cup.

Tiered drying patios on a farm in El Salvador.

Finally, I spent a day with the winner of last year’s COE competition, Bosque Lya. The trip was compelling, and I was able to spend enough time with the family and administrators of the farm to get excited about working with them this year. We toured the finca, with each zone named after a different city in California. San Jose, Monterrey, La Jolla…it’s all there, and many of the micro-zones on the farm have climate conditions quite distinct from one another. It will be interesting to investigate the impact of some of these natural variables on the cup this April when the coffee is ready for tasting.

I just got back last week and am now readying myself for a trip to Guatemala to get to work on this year’s El Cuervo. It’s like that during his time of year. But before I sign off, I’d like to return to the thought that began this column but somehow became lost in the excitement of the farm accounts. The observation is simply this: El Salvador and Nicaragua, two countries that share a lot of history (for better and for worse) and geographical proximity (they are practically neighbors) really have completely different coffee industries. Startlingly different.

Beginning with the trees themselves, Nica offers up Caturra and Catuai, while Sal has an abundance of Bourbon and, to a lesser extent, Pacamara. Nicaragua is a sprawling country with many different microclimates and zones and lots of coffee growing in forested areas, whereas El Salvador is tiny, with several key coffee production areas that are densely planted and meticulously cultivated.  Much of the forward progress in the coffee sector of Nicaragua has been driven by the cooperatives and the small growers who act in solidarity to achieve their goals. There has been tremendous growth in the coffee sector there over the last several years, and much of it is the result of grassroots-type effort to build infrastructure. Most of the growers there work on just a few acres of land and produce a very small amount of exportable coffee each year. Contrast this with El Salvador, where the norm is large traditional family estates that comprise hundred of acres and where producers often have their own brands of roasted coffee to sell domestically. It is a very, very different scene.

But that is one of the great things about coffee. Every producing country has unique producing conditions: a complex amalgam of particular climate conditions, soil types and botanical varietals, cultural tradition, and technical infrastructure (or lack thereof) for processing coffee. It is the synergy between these elements that yields the unique tastes of individual coffees, and gives them the “taste of place”. As an industry we are still at an early stage of understanding when it comes to knowing exactly how some of these things translate into the wonderful tastes we find in the cup. It is clear,however, that they do indeed translate, and as roasters we are in the very special position of having the ability to work in all of these different environments, every year. Every single trip to origin is filled with new revelations…it has been that way for the last five years, and I’m sure will be that way during the next five.