WAKING THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

The Future of Peruvian Coffees

by Geoff Watts

DEEP IN THE CENTRAL PERUVIAN VALLEY of Alto Huallaga, the jungle teems with life. Spectacular canyons split by calm rivers easily lead to reflection about slow change and the nature of movement. Such rivers have always had a close relationship with commerce, and these are no different, whether they support a quiet eco-tourist business or provide transport for people still years away from the possibility of good roads and easy access.
    From atop the viewpoint on the edge of Tingo Maria, a city of roughly 35,000, you can see the landmark that locals refer to as Sleeping Beauty—an outline sculpted from the jagged ridges of the surrounding hills that resembles a healthy woman lying on her back, dozing placidly above the valley.

    Seeing this woman makes me think about Peru itself, and specifically about its amazingly underdeveloped coffee industry, a sort of slumbering beauty in its own right. I’m here this time for the First Annual Convention of Quality Peruvian Coffee, but there are plenty of convincing reasons for a green coffee buyer to be in Peru, and I marvel at the untapped potential that exists.

A Land of Dreams

Peru stretches from 10–18 degrees south of the equator along the western side of South America—roughly 2,000 miles, similar in length to the entire western coast of the United States. Despite the fact that there is as much fertile highland growing area here as in nearly all of Central America, and that coffee is Peru’s most important export, the country’s annual production of exportable coffee is less than three million bags. Compare that to Colombia, which exported more than 10 million bags in 2004, or the much smaller Honduras, which managed 2.8 million, and you get a good picture of how much opportunity is being lost.
    Part of the reason for this is that Peru, like many coffee countries that have been hindered by powerful economic obstacles, is decades behind in technical development. The problems stem mainly from the systems in place (or not in place) for preserving quality.
    George Howell of Terroir Select Coffees, who volunteered in Peru prior to the convention to help prepare the local cuppers, agrees. “I do not think the problem of finding great expressions, usually produced in small to micro-lots, lies with the farmers,” he explains. “An amazing number are deeply committed to producing the highest quality possible. They show no trace of cynicism.” Yet the obstacles are indeed many. “The problem lies in the entire coffee delivery system,” says Howell, “from [the final drying mills] in the valleys bordering the coffee regions to [the port]; small exquisite lots getting mixed before proper assessment; micro-lots delivered not equaling samples sent; poor milling, and long delays at a humid port without proper facilities where quality easily dives towards instability and poor cup value.”
    Politics are an inescapable element of the coffee trade as well, as coffee is one of the most important sources of export income for producing countries. The endless jostling for position and advantage sometimes creates a climate that severely inhibits progress. Peru is not alone in this, but it stands out as one of the more disjointed countries. The overwhelming and multidirectional resistance to the idea of a national cupping competition is just one example of how an industry can impede its own growth and advancement by refusing to foster cooperation among its major players.
    This problem is recognized by many buyers in the United States, including Alan Odom from InterAmerican Coffee who notes that, “politics stand in the way of quality improvements. The Peruvian coffee industry is more political than it should be, [and] it interferes with buyers’ ability to refine their purchases of [Peruvian] coffees.”
    While the infrastructure deficit creates many challenges when it comes to consistent production, the historical lack of development offers a silver lining: while many of Peru’s competitors have steadily moved towards sturdy and high-yielding hybrid varietals like catimor, caturra and catuai, Peru has by default retained a large percentage of the older heirloom varietals, typica and bourbon, sought after by many specialty coffee buyers for their delicious sweetness and nuance. Unlike many of their coffee-growing brethren who have fields of hybrid varietals planted at altitudes below 1,000 meters (making them in some ways unsuitable for specialty coffee production), Peruvian small farmers have both wonderful altitude and immensely flavorful coffee varietals.
    This may seem like a poor trade-off to the many farmers who struggle to maintain a subsistence level of existence, but it is reason to nurture a sense of optimism. The fact is, most small coffee farmers worldwide face a very difficult and uncertain future due to the severely depressed coffee market. Over the last five years, countless growers have had to abandon coffee altogether to make ends meet, and in these conditions, sources of optimism are rare.

Waking From the Slumber

With all of this in mind, I traveled to Lima to preside over the first annual National Coffee Competition, sponsored by the Camera Peruana de Café, a large association of coffee exporters, and Jungle Tech Peru SAC, a private import/export company.
    For those readers who may raise an eyebrow at the mention of private business and big exporters, please do not be alarmed. Unlike many events that take place every year in coffee countries and cater to small groups of insiders who already possess a degree of competitive advantage due to their access to capital, this one is decidedly non-partisan. There are no fees to enter, and everybody is invited—encouraged even—to participate. Of course, there are always those looking to take advantage, and the politics surrounding things like this that can open doors and lead to opportunities are usually very palpable. But to my eyes, this event was created and designed specifically to circumnavigate the politics.
    That is always easier said than done, and to play devil’s advocate, I do believe that politics will creep in wherever there is a crack large enough to squeeze a penny. At this point the program is still in its infancy, meaning there are probably a few unfilled cracks. But intention is important, and there is no doubt that this event was conceived and executed with the best of intentions.
    The goal is simple: to allow small farmers with production that may total five or 10 bags per year to see their coffees compete on equal terms in a setting that rewards only cup quality. The key engineer of this competition, KC O’Keefe, owner of Jungle Tech, explained that his motivation for putting the event together was born out of concern that Peru did not have its own equal-opportunity national cupping event. “At the disappointment of past ‘national’ cuppings, where only a select group was represented, I felt the urge to do something,” he says. “On an internal scale, several regions in Peru were completely absent from [prior cupping events]. I was appalled that such blatant preferential treatment was given to farmers and groups from one region.”
    It seems obvious that a transparently operated national event with actual physical coffee lots available for sale is a good idea for a country struggling to establish an identity in the specialty coffee arena. Yet despite letters of support from the SCAA, the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (operators of the Cup of Excellence) and several international cuppers, many key players in the Peruvian industry resisted the idea. But perseverance usually pays off, and the event coordinators were committed enough to keep pushing despite the lack of internal support.
    The actual competition came together only after months of surmounting successive and imposing hurdles; even up until the last minute coordinators were hammering out details and dealing with new surprises. Such is the nature of beginnings, and they are not so much problems as simple growing pains. The hardest part about changing anything (much less an entire industry) is taking the first few steps. With any luck, momentum kicks in to start paving the road. In the end, the Camera, Café Peru and Jungle Tech were able to make the competition go with the help of Caritas, a Catholic agriculture and poverty relief program that assisted with the administration of the regional cuppings, and Prompex, a government body in charge of promoting exports who kicked in a bit funding at the last minute.
    Under these conditions we carried out the two stages of the competition, with everyone unsure about what we would encounter along the way. The first segment was the pre-selection carried out by a jury consisting of nine cuppers—myself, KC and seven Peruvian cuppers who constitute the Peruvian cupping force. It is a tragically under-populated force, to be sure. With a country this big, it makes no sense that there are so few skilled tasters to sort out the good from the mediocre and the bad, helping producers, millers and exporters find their best quality to sell to the consuming markets. Compare this scene to Colombia, where nearly every big coffee organization has a few trained cuppers and the Fed that makes use of dozens of cuppers that can stand toe-to-toe with the best in the specialty industry in the U.S. Or Nicaragua, where nearly 30 local cuppers auditioned to participate in the last Cup of Excellence competition in May.
    Another hurdle to Peru’s growth is that the development of more trained cuppers at origin is essential to the building of real, fortified specialty coffee industries in producing countries. Without cuppers, there is little way to evaluate cup quality of individual lots of coffee. As a result, many great coffees disappear every year into amorphous container-sized lots of average quality. And producers, without the help of experienced tasters, do not have adequate means to understand the quality of their crop and determine its intrinsic value, nor can they figure out what exactly they must do to improve quality for the future. Because of this, farmers are left selling commodities, at commodity prices, since they don’t know how to differentiate their product from their neighbors and instead are left grasping for whatever meager advantage they can obtain via certifications or relationships with particular exporters.
    In Peru, the national cupping stage started with 80 coffees. Over a period of three days, the field was narrowed to 23 competitors that would carry on to the international jury rounds. Our goal at this point was simply to eliminate coffees that had obvious shortcomings, and to put together a group of clean coffees that would have a chance to succeed in the later rounds.
    It was, as expected, a bit of a rollercoaster ride. Along the way, we encountered nearly every defect in the book, ranging from ferment to phenol to the more innocuous but quality-hindering tastes of astringency, bitterness and woodiness, and the wineyness that comes from overripe fruit. But despite the abundance of flaws, we did find coffees that deserved a second look, and by Friday evening we had sorted out a group that would graduate to the next round to await the mouths of 11 thirsty international coffee jurors.
    The jurors arrived over the weekend from the U.S. and Japan. On Tuesday, we met to cup two flights and calibrate ourselves. This went better than expected, and we entered Wednesday feeling like a unified jury well prepared to suss out the best-tasting coffees in the field. The first day we conducted three flights of seven or eight coffees each, pausing for lunch and revitalization after the first two.
    Fatigue is one of the major challenges a cupper faces during a coffee competition, as anyone who has participated knows. The effect of so much caffeine on the body and the rollercoaster that takes one from wired to tired and back again can make it hard to maintain the type of concentration that accurate cupping requires. And the stakes involved demand that kind of focus. The outcome of a competition like this can directly affect the economic livelihood of participating growers, as the top-ranked coffees often bring prices up to five or 10 times the current market value. Winning a coffee competition also brings attention to specific farms. The confirmation of quality signified by these awards is a beacon for specialty coffee buyers looking for great coffees; where better to look than to those who have demonstrated their ability to produce greatness by succeeding in a blind competition? Thus, the importance of evaluating the coffees accurately is magnified 100-fold by the fact that there are real consequences involved and real people who stand to benefit immensely if their coffees are chosen as award winners. This is one of the reasons why competition cupping forms are typically much more detailed than those that most of us use at home in our labs.
    At home, we focus on those coffees that we really like and are considering for purchase; those that don’t cut the mustard are simply dismissed so that one can direct attention to the ones that are great. In a competition setting, even the mediocre coffees need to be thoroughly deconstructed and scored so that the grower will get useful feedback that might be used to improve quality in the future.
    A good example of the degree of thoroughness we expect of ourselves as jurors came in the form of one particular coffee that completely polarized the jury. On day one of the international cuppings, we encountered a sample that created a buzz during the post-tasting discussion period. It was a not a modest coffee by anyone’s measure; rather it had a nearly overbearing sweetness and wild fruit notes that made it impossible to ignore. During the ensuing discussion, we found that nearly half the jury scored it in the 90+ range, while the other half had effectively eliminated it from the competition by scoring it below 70 points. Up until this moment, we had been a very harmonious jury. But this coffee found a way to win the hearts of some and soil the palates of others, and so we spent the next 45 minutes talking about it.
    Several judges were convinced that the fruitiness and syrupy sweetness came from improper fermentation and needed to be treated as a defect. Others insisted that the flavors themselves were so refined and pleasurable they deserved to be regarded not as defects but as positive attributes, and that the slight floral accents in the coffee were proof that it was not a ferment but instead a wildly unique yet clean coffee.
    Both groups defended their positions and explained exactly what it was that led them to react either positively or negatively to the cup characteristics. The explanations were intelligent and thoughtful, and after a while, it became clear that all of us really did agree on what we were tasting—but simply disagreed about the source of the flavors. Based on the fact that the coffee had scored tremendously well during the very first regional pre-selections performed by the local cuppers, a decision was made to move on and allow the coffee into the second round, figuring that it would reveal its true nature more clearly on the second day.
    As it turned out, a second look at the coffee did little to change the situation. A few cuppers switched sides, but we were still a divided group occupying the opposite ends of the scoring range. This time the deliberations yielded to a larger discussion about natural coffees and taste of place. We talked a bit about Yemeni coffee, a staple in many U.S. roasters’ coffee line-ups, and one that usually fetches a price in the two to four dollar range for green. Looking at most Yemeni coffees in their unroasted form can be a psychedelic experience of sorts. There are beans of all colors, shapes and sizes in those bags. The coffee is always defective in one way or another if judged by even the loosest of Central American cleanliness standards. It has wild, winey fruit that most surely is a result of the natural fermentation, and many coffee purists dismiss it outright as a dirty coffee. Yet there are others who swear by it and will gladly shell out top dollar to acquire a bag of authentic Mattari, Sanani or Ismaili. This begs the question, why can Yemen succeed in getting these premiums for a coffee that would likely be thrown off the cupping table if it were labeled “Costa Rica?” The same can be asked about Sumatran beans, with their hallmark earthy and musty characteristics that originate more from the way in which they are handled after picking than they do from the genetics of the coffee trees themselves. From the perspective of the Central or South American coffee grower, it is a bewildering phenomenon that doesn’t seem quite fair. Yet that is the current reality of the U.S. specialty coffee market.
    To lay the issue to rest, we did one cupping with that controversial coffee alone. We tasted 10 to 15 cups of each one and looked for inconsistencies to determine whether or not the fruitiness came from a clean fermentation. Fortunately, the exercise proved fruitful, in that most of the cuppers agreed that there was indeed something slightly funky (i.e. defective) about the coffee and that it should be eliminated from the competition. A subsequent inspection of the green coffee confirmed the conclusion—there was a strange, perfumy odor that most certainly did not belong. We disqualified the coffee and refocused our attention on the remaining lots. But the questions that were raised by this single example are ones that will be debated for years to come.
    In the final analysis, the coffees in this particular competition were not very exciting. In fact, only four of the original 80 coffees finished with an average score above 80 points (the generally accepted cut-off point for true specialty coffees). But this was somewhat expected, and not as much of a disappointment as it may seem. We knew it would be a bit rocky—that is the nature of the Peruvian coffee scene right now, and it is the nature of programs in their infancy. What was really important was not the discovery of excellent specialty coffees (although that is most certainly the long-term goal!) but that the conference established the groundwork for future competitions and showed the value of extensive cupping to sort out the great from the mediocre. This competition was conceived as a springboard for future endeavors. The hope is that each year it will grow in importance, that more farmers will participate, that there will be more involvement by the U.S., European, and Japanese roasters, and that the quality of coffees will increase.
    These competitions also benefit producing countries in ways that may not seem obvious at first. The Cup of Excellence competition has proven in different countries that simply conducting the event is a boon to the local industry for several reasons. Holding a competition brings international buyers closer to the source of coffee production and fosters relationships between the buyers and sellers of coffee. More importantly, it allows local cuppers to spend several days tasting and discussing coffees with the tasters from the other side of the pond—the very roasters and importers who ultimately decide the value of the coffees. This meeting of minds and tongues is highly valuable. The more a producing country understands what consuming markets are looking for in a specialty coffee, the better able they are to provide those coffees. A historical disconnect between roasters and producers is one of the reasons why quality has inched forward so slowly, and why there is still a wide lack of understanding on both sides about what specialty really means. And, as I mentioned earlier, most producing countries do not have enough experienced cuppers who are trained to look not just for defects but also for the positive attributes and nuances that define exceptional coffees. It is those nuances that give great coffees an intrinsic value that allows them to divorce themselves from the C Market and sell for premiums based on their quality alone.
    Stepping back from the competition for a moment and looking at the promise of exceptional quality that lies relatively untapped in this gigantic country gives one every reason to consider investing time and energy here in the pursuit of these hidden gems. Despite the staggering obstacles and heavily stacked deck that gives producers the smallest of odds, there are already examples of what a great Peruvian coffee can be. I have tasted several lots in the last two years that were staggeringly delicious.
    While Peruvian coffee faces many obstacles, they are ones that can be overcome. The key is for the competing elements within the coffee sector to realize that they have much more to gain by working together than they do by engaging in ceaseless infighting that frustrates development. Specialty coffee is a rapidly growing market, and a unified effort on the part of a producing country to carve out a major slice is a far better strategy than to exert energy battling internally over the crumbs. The audience is there, and getting bigger by the day; all that remains is for the actors to get on the same stage and create something worth celebrating.
    I look forward to the day when Peru can rise to prominence within the specialty community and begin to deliver on its massive potential. The Sleeping Beauty can only slumber for so long, and when she awakens, it will be to the delight of all those who appreciate the intoxicating qualities of carefully crafted coffees that are allowed to reach full bloom.

Geoff Watts is the vice president of coffee for Intelligentsia Coffee Roasters.
He spends as much time out of the U.S. as in it, always looking for ways to improve quality at source.