Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
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COLOMBIAN CONNECTIVITY continued from page 37 Key to cultivating coffee interest in the next generation is building an exciting consuming culture—this is where Pergamino comes into play. Pergamino's owner, Pedro Miguel Echavarria, is the 26-year-old son of a coffee farmer; like Piza, Echavarria has advised Fajardo on how to steer young people toward valu- ing coffee. In Pergamino, Echavarria—who went to college at Boston's Tufts University—has created a café that combines the ideals of U.S. "third wave" coffee culture with pride in his nation's beans. "The idea is that every time we find a great cof- fee from Antioquia or Colombia in general, we showcase it here," he says. "We want people to see that there are great coffees in this region." $1'5(: +(7=(/ /($'6 $ 52%867$ &833,1* he was at Let's Talk Coffee to lead several robusta-related talks. Though many roasters use robusta in their blends—the spe- cies is known for fuller body and higher caffeine content than Arabica—they rarely tout that fact. "I think that for most buy- ers, robusta's been a dirty word and something they wouldn't necessarily promote," Hetzel says. Though he acknowledges that robusta at its worst has a rubber- 3285 29(5 $7 3(5*$0,12 Pergamino has been open just since September, and it's one of a half-dozen Medellin shops stressing a high-quality take on coffee— and charging the higher prices that accompany the hand-crafted approach. It echoes the vision of Fajardo and his advisors of an Antioquia that respects its roots in coffee—and passes on those lessons to the next generation. "We need to understand that we in Colombia come from coffee, and that coffee plays a giant role in who we are in our culture," says Piza of Sustainable Harvest. "We want young people to connect with high-quality coffee and say, 'This is who we are.'" 52%867$Í6 6($7 $7 7+( 7$%/( While Colombia grows coffee from the Arabica species, farmers in other parts of the world rely on the robusta species, Arabica's main alternative. Though many in specialty coffee and the general public have long considered it inferior, robusta has been undergo- ing some recent image rehabilitation. In September, the Coffee Quality Institute offered its first R Grader certification course, which will begin creating an arsenal of cuppers certified to evalu- ate and score robusta samples the same way cuppers grade Arabica under CQI's Q Coffee System. One of the figures leading the robusta charge is Andrew Hetzel of Hawaii-based consultancy Cafemakers; he is helming the R Grader courses as well as working with growers at origin, and 38 Fresh Cup Magazine freshcup.com ized, unpleasant taste, Hetzel says the species has quality poten- tial, as well as other benefits that position it as a viable alternative to Arabica. For instance: • Robusta is more productive than Arabica. Hetzel says the "dirty word" species has a 50 percent higher yield under normal circumstances. • While Arabica only grows in moderate, temperate climes, robus- ta can thrive in hotter weather, which Hetzel says is important both because it can grow at lower altitudes in the tropics and because it's better positioned as global temperatures warm up annually. • Robusta plants take longer to mature—10-12 months versus Arabica's seven-to-nine-month window—which means a delayed payoff but additional income at a time of year when Arabica har- vest may not be occurring. • Robusta is more disease-resistant than Arabica. It's immune to leaf rust, coffee berry disease and other ailments. (However, it's not resistant to wilt disease or the coffee berry borer.) While these factors may push robusta toward being a viable alternative—or complement—to Arabica, this flexibility likely won't matter much to the specialty industry if robusta's taste isn't on par with specialty standards. Hetzel says increasing quality- minded efforts are being made at the farm level, and he points to Brazil, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Tanzania and Uganda as the origins likely to lead the charge of higher-quality robusta. The fruit of some of that labor was on display at Let's Talk Coffee, as Hetzel led a robusta cupping with Sunalini Menon of Coffeelab India and Vinko Sandalj of Italy's Sandalj Trading. Though it may be unrealistic to expect robusta to suddenly develop the sort of profile suited to a starring role as a single origin, the roasters, import- ers and growers in attendance seemed to see the coffees as a step ELLIOTT SCHOFIELD PHOTOGRAPHY ELLIOTT SCHOFIELD PHOTOGRAPHY