By JANE L. LEVERE Published: April 29, 2012

NESPRESSO, a division of Nestlé that sells single-serve espresso machines and capsules of coffee worldwide, is introducing its first United States television advertising on Monday.

The 30-second spot, which will run on national network and cable television, is intended to introduce Nespresso to a wider audience of American coffee drinkers, among whom single-serve coffee machines are gaining popularity.

The advertising also could help Nespresso fend off new competition from Starbucks, which will introduce its Verismo single-cup espresso machine in the fall; and from collaborators Cuisinart and Illycaffé, and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Luigi Lavazza, which are developing single-serve espresso machines.

Michael C. Bellas, chairman and chief executive of Beverage Marketing, a consulting company, said: “Over the last 10 years, the growth of the single-cup pod coffee market has been phenomenal. The category provides variety, customization and good-tasting products that hit consumers where they are.”

Sales of coffee for these systems have grown in the high double digits in the last three to four years, jumping 66.1 percent last year, he added.

Larry Finkel, director of food and beverage research for MarketResearch.com, said an online survey by his company last September found that 21 percent of respondents in households where noninstant coffee was made owned an electric single-cup coffeemaker. Mr. Finkel said the market was dominated by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and its Keurig K-Cup brewing system. Other companies, besides Nespresso, that offer such systems include Kraft Foods, which makes the Tassimo brand, and Mars, which makes Flavia. According to Mitchell Pinheiro, a packaged goods analyst for Janney Capital Markets, only 15 percent of Nespresso sales worldwide are generated in the United States; of Nespresso’s 2011 global sales of 3.5 billion Swiss francs ($3.9 billion), sales in the United States were 525 million Swiss francs ($579 million).

Nespresso, he added, generated 20 percent of parent company Nestle’s total sales growth in the 2011 fiscal year. “With that much growth and very strong competition coming into the U.S. market, it makes sense for it to step up its marketing to protect its brand,” Mr. Pinheiro said.

In addition, in the United States, Nespresso sales have jumped 20 to 25 percent in the last two years, compared with “the 1 to 2 percent growth we’re accustomed to seeing for packaged goods,” Mr. Pinheiro said. “This growth is very important to Nespresso; they have to protect it. There hasn’t been any meaningful competition to date.”

Nespresso has sold its machines and coffee capsules in the United States for about 10 years. It sells capsules of 16 blends of coffee and two limited-edition flavors, as well as nine models of machines for home use. The machines are sold at the company’s four boutiques in New York, Boston and Miami, with a fifth scheduled to open in San Francisco this fall; on its Web site, nespresso.com; and at retailers like Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Williams-Sonoma.

The only way consumers can buy capsules of coffee is directly from Nespresso, either through home delivery or in the boutiques. Nespresso machines for home use range from $149 to $2,500, while single-serve capsules range from 60 cents to 68 cents each.

The company’s new television commercial, by the Martin Agency, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, initially leads viewers to believe they are in a cafe, illuminated by romantic lighting. A woman — who is not fully shown — chooses a coffee capsule from a Nespresso box, inserts it into a machine and makes a cup of coffee, topped with frothy milk.

At the end of the spot, the woman is seen draped in a towel, standing by a window in her home. The voice-over says, “I found the best cafe in the world, Nespresso, where there’s a grand cru to match my every mood, where just one touch creates the perfect cup, where no one makes a better cappuccino, latte or espresso than me, and where clothing is optional.”

The spot concludes with the tagline, “Nespresso, the best cafe, yours.”

It will run nationally, starting Monday, on cable channels like Fox News and the Weather Channel in the early morning, and on network shows like “Private Practice,” “House” and “60 Minutes.”

Martin has redesigned Nespresso’s United States Web site and created new point of purchase material for its retailers. Digital advertising will begin in May.

According to Franz Niedermair, vice president for marketing for Nespresso North America, the new campaign is aimed at “coffee lovers interested in a great coffee experience at home.”

He said the company deliberately had not used George Clooney — who appears in Nespresso advertising in Europe, Asia and Latin America — in the campaign because it wanted the focus to be on educating American consumers about the Nespresso system.

In the United States in recent years, Nespresso has advertised in regional editions of magazines and newspapers — like Food & Wine, Town & Country, Esquire and The Wall Street Journal — and in trade publications. According to Kantar Media, its annual advertising spending has ranged from $28,000 in 2007 to $2.8 million in 2010. Nespresso executives declined to disclose the budget for the new campaign.

Mr. Niedermair said Nespresso was changing its advertising strategy now “to address increasing consumer demand, which we have been getting across the nation.” He added, “We needed to address this demand and drive awareness with national network TV.”

He said the company began planning the television campaign last October, before many competing single-cup espresso systems were announced. “The demand for high-end coffee increases every year in the market, and it’s a logical step for more people to come into the market,” he said.

Debra Mednick, executive director of home for NPD Group, a market research company, called television advertising by small kitchen appliance manufacturers “atypical.” For example, according to Kantar Media, from 2007 to 2011, last year was the only one in which Keurig advertised on television, spending $2 million.

Coffee Geek, posted March 20, 2012 by Emily Haworth

Now that the harvest is nearly over, all the trials and tribulations of coffee picking are very fresh in my mind. In this column, I plan to share the When, What and How of coffee picking. The coffee picking season is the busiest time of all for a coffee farmer. It is a season of early mornings ferrying coffee pickers to and fro and evenings spent waiting in line at the beneficios the processing plant where the coffee cherries are sold.

The “When” of Coffee Picking
In Panama we have a single harvest per year. Here in the Boquete Valley our coffee harvest runs from October through February with peak harvests varying depending upon altitude. Here there are some farms still producing in March, mostly at very high elevations. That said, volume is very small and the pickers are now asking nearly three times what they were being paid at the peak of the season. The last beneficios is closing at the end of this week, in the middle of March. Most of the Northern hemisphere Arabica coffee is on a similar schedule.

High quality comes from the middle of the harvest or what we call peak harvest. A coffee harvest produces volumes of cherries on a typical bell curve. Slow at first, gradually picking up volume until you reach the peak, then dropping off again.

The peak generally represents the cherries in the middle of the tree, the middle of the branches. This means the first few picks of the bushes is not high quality. The same is true of the last few picks. The peak of the harvest is when the cherries are flourishing thickest and fastest.
During peak harvest the bushes can be picked every 8-10 days depending upon the weather. If it is sunny they ripen up faster. This way only the ripe cherries get picked. Each session is called a pass-through of the farm. It is done methodically starting and finishing in the same place. This is because each pass through itself can take up to a week, depending upon how many pickers are available.

Peak harvests vary by elevation. Higher altitude farms have later peak harvests. Because the harvest starts in the heavy rainy season and spans into the summer months, it makes quite a difference when the peak harvest occurs. If it occurs during heavy rain, there are more problems picking and more problems drying the coffee caused by humidity.

The “What” of Picking Coffee
It sounds so simple, pick only the ripe red cherries but this is really one of the most difficult things to achieve. Firstly, what is a ripe red cherry? Well, here in Panama it is a bright red cherry. Some regions and coffee producers pick purple. We pick red.

A cherry that is past its best is called a grape and when roasted tastes winey.

A cherry that is picked when it is not really fully red, I have heard called something like a pimenton, and it tastes like a potato when roasted.

A green cherry won’t roast.

The cherries grow in whorls around the branches and the red ones are mixed up with not so red ones, pink ones and green ones. Even when I pick with no incentive to rush, I still get some non-reds. It is much harder than it appears.

Sometimes the weather gets in the way. When it rains very hard, and it often does at the beginning of the harvest as it is our heavy rain season, the cherries have a tendency to split and fall to the ground. If this looks likely, then we pick slightly green rather than lose the red ones to the grass.

The same thing happens if disease strikes the farm. We have a couple of fungal problems here in the Boquete Valley. Rojo is the name of a red rust-like fungus that attacks the leaves. Treating the coffee with chemical fungicide during harvest is not desirable and difficult to time. It should not be done during picking itself. A lot of farmers use fungicide, in fact most do. I have seen many product label violations, for example, chemicals being used within too few days of picking. Farmers are tempted to use fungicide because unless they do they run the risk losing both leaves and coffee cherries to fungal infection. Some farmers opt to pick what cherries are there regardless of their color. Even green cherries or dried up un-ripened ones can be sold at the local market.

Also, at the beginning and end of the harvest it is not cost effective to bring pickers in every 10 days, the frequency drops to 2-3 week gaps between each pass through of the farm. We tend to pick a wider range including partial reds and some purples. Most beneficios will accept this quality. However, cherries that are only partially red (not ripe enough) or deep purple (too ripe) do not make for good cupping scores within the specialty coffee realm. Only the perfectly red cherries are to be kept for high end coffee.

Availability of pickers can also affect the precision with which we pick. Currently, we are suffering from a picker shortage. Many Indigenous workers prefer to work in Costa Rica, just a short bus ride away. It is difficult to insist that the workers pick slowly and carefully as they get paid by volume and want to make money. Besides, they can always leave Panama and head to Costa Rica where their earning potential is higher. For some pickers the money they make during the coffee picking season is what they live on for the rest of the year.

To complicate matters further, yellow Catuai is very popular here. Yellow Catuai ripens yellow not red. So the final basket is not a clean red basket of cherries but contains both red and some ripe yellow ones as well.

The “How” of Picking Coffee
Yes, there is more than one way to pick a cherry. Although few farm owners have ever actually picked cherries themselves there are more opinions on this topic than anything else. This is one of the most challenging things for the owner of the farm. The owner wants a high quality pick, which fetches a higher price and tastes better in the cup. The custom is to pay coffee pickers by lata. A lata is a volume measurement but works out at approximately 30lbs of cherries. This year we have been paying $3 per lata, higher than ever before. If pickers are given an incentive to fill buckets then the tendency is to go as quickly as they can and they are not too selective in their picking. Quality is compromised.

A picker can pick between around 2-8 latas a day depending on how good they are. When I pick, I get closer to 2. Some of the Indigenous professionals regularly take much higher volumes.

As stated earlier, it is very tempting for the pickers to compromise quality and the plants to get volume. Here’s how we go about picking:

To pick right, you need to pick each cherry individually. Sort of pull it off the whorl, leaving behind the less ripe and unripe ones. This is time consuming.

It is sometimes faster to strip off the cherries in such a way that the little stalk that joins the berry to the branch is taken off with the cherry. This is a disaster as it means that there will be no flower coming from that leaf junction in the following year and no coffee. I know owners who will no longer grow the Caturra varietal because the bushes lend themselves to having their branches stripped by the pickers. They are short bushes with lots of sub-branches heavily laden with fruit. If they are stripped they are sensitive and will not grow cherries on those nodes next year, so you loose a harvest.

Similarly, some varieties of coffee bush are tall. Our coffee pickers are generally short. Indigenous Ngoble pickers, who are our main stay coffee pickers and workers, are generally very short maybe 5ft or less. Latinos are also a lot shorter than some of the larger bushes. Typica trees and some Catuai are around 8ft or more in height and require use of ladders. Sometimes pickers break the branches and the top of the trees to reach the fruit.

Pickers also want to pick from bushes that are densely packed with easy to find cherries. They do not like Typica trees, which are not heavy cherry bearers. This slows them down. Typica trees are a double whammy of tall and low fruit bearing, which makes them extremely unpopular with pickers. This is a great shame as they are also one of the most delicious varietals. It is my favorite varietal in the cup.

Pickers do not want to bother with older trees, or immature ones, or any parts of the farm that are not heavily producing. They are apt to skip rows or lots to get into the richer pickings. This is where it is very important to have a foreman, preferably someone not related to the pickers to ensure fair play.

The pickers are also fairly fickle in their loyalties. Many have come away from the Comarca or reservation for the season to earn money. Their earning potential is their main concern. They are likely to come to you late in the picking season when the farms in Costa Rica are done with harvest because Costa Rica pays more than Panama. This may be after peak harvest at lower elevations. They then follow the peak harvest up the mountain where the fastest, easiest money is to be made and abandon farms at lower elevations early. As soon as a farmer’s peak harvest is over the pickers start looking for greener pastures and start moving further up the mountain.

All this means that if you pay by volume, which is almost a pre-requisite for attracting pickers, you also need to supervise the job very closely. For each crew of pickers you need a foreman. Every day when the bags are being counted you need to inspect for quality and pay close attention to each pickers habits.

The end of the picking day is important and sometimes a lengthy affair. Everyone gathers to have their sacks measured and receive payment. Sometimes this is very complex. I had one day towards the end of the harvest when we were picking red and green cherries. Each lata of green was one price and red another. In both cases they were not round numbers. I had to find an enormous amount of silver change and one dollar and five dollar bills to make pay packets for each person on a team of 15 or more pickers. I needed a calculator as it was quite beyond anything I could work out on the back of an envelope. I had to prepare all this in advance.

It is important to pay attention to each pickers sacks, especially early in the season and anytime you have new pickers. Look at the quality and provide feedback as needed. Feedback to the pickers is important. Sometimes it may mean having to fire a picker if there are too many non-reds or damaged trees in their pickings on a consistent basis.

Hopefully this helps to explain the complexity behind bringing you the reddest, ripest cherries for your Specialty Coffee fix. I believe that in the future some things will have to change in the way coffee is picked in Specialty Coffee regions. The current way of paying by volume does not encourage quality. Migrant workers are not loyal to the farmer’s business nor are they vested in the farmer’s strategy for quality. Speaking for myself, it is also all a bit stressful – telling folks to slow down and choose coffee cherries carefully while paying them by volume is exhausting.

[Wow - and we just want to wake up and make a great tasting coffee - su]

March 22, 2012, 2:11 PM By ANDREW C. REVKIN

La Colombe Torrefaction
Todd Carmichael, a founder of La Colombe Torrefaction, in Haiti.
Todd Carmichael, a founder of the coffee roaster La Colombe Torrefaction, is an interesting mix of entrepreneur, adventurer (Antarctic speed trekker), showman (a reality TV show on coffee hunting is coming) and philanthropist. His latest venture combining all of these traits is a line of coffee, called Lyon, sales of which will generate money for environmental initiatives supported by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. The coffee blend includes beans that Carmichael is obtaining from Haitian sources that, he says, sidestep predatory loan sharks and middlemen who have hampered the climb out of poverty by Haitian coffee growers. I recently had an e-mail exchange with Carmichael about his experience building relationships with coffee growers in rural Haiti.

Here’s are some video highlights from Carmichael’s trip, followed by our e-conversation:
Q.
What led you to Haiti, in particular?
A.
I’ve been sourcing raw coffee for many years, in many countries, for my roasting company La Colombe. My search in Haiti began the season of the earthquake, and I stepped it up in terms of urgency after the quake. What many people do not know is that the earthquake occurred at the start of the coffee shipping phase of the season. Little coffee from that season made it out, which for farmers compounded the disaster.

Q.
What are the main impediments to turning this into a sustainable resource?
A.
If by sustainable you mean financially sustainable, the most intimidating barrier I face in every coffee region and the biggest impediment to sustainability in Haiti, is the presence of “coyotes,” or the exploitative, often violent, coffee shakedown artists. The coyote typically “loan sharks” the peasant farmer small amounts of cash during the dry season – when the farmer is profoundly desperate — in exchange for his entire harvest, or for pennies on the dollar. This is a no-haggling transaction. Many of these types even present themselves to the outside world as “Coffee Marketing Co-ops,” or worse, farmer co-ops, some even maintain popular coffee certifications, but all of them are bad news. Often, and this was the case in Haiti, I have to break this system in order to buy. For any roaster, this requires a certain tolerance for risk and something not often found in roasters – the willingness to stick it out with that farmer in the seasons that follow.

This is the true face of most coffee — even specialty coffee. And this has not won me oodles of praise amongst my peers. While priding itself on “fairness,” specialty coffee is culprit number one when it comes to switching farmers, coffees, regions and countries. Go to your local coffee spot, and watch the chalkboard change like a stoplight — farmer after farmer after farmer. Year in year out, the roaster is always looking for something different, and therefore the coyote cycle remains the same. The peasant farmer is not going to take a risk and turn over the apple cart, even if it is exploitative, if the buyer is unwilling to be there when things go sour and, eventually, everywhere things go sour.

What is important to understand is that the average coffee farm is no larger than three acres, tops. The concept of estate coffee, outside a few wealthy countries, is ludicrous. In short, no matter the quality, it is most likely that your coffee was grown on a tiny plot tended to by a family, none of whom know how to read and write, and it arrived to you through an exploitative system.

In Haiti, on my first trip into the mountains, let’s just say I was not met with a large frosted cake upon arrival, and it got a lot worse before it got better. My Haitian coffee came at a price: three separate death threats, a near beating, some very stressful confrontations and some seven different long treks through the mountains with a backpack full of cash. I’d say now it was worth it. Now all my farmers are free from exploitation and can grown and sell coffee, as they should (and I’m adding more every day). But the other regions of Haiti, much of the world, really, still struggles under this system.

Q.
How did Leonardo DiCaprio get hooked up with La Colombe?
A.
As a direct coffee sourcer your world can cut a pretty wide swath and include any number of some 80 countries. In each country I work, farmer exploitation, environmental mismanagement and animal welfare crowd my attention. I can’t escape it. I was doing my damnedest to help save the lives of the wild orangutan living in the peat forests of Borneo when I caught wind of another man doing the same in Sumatra, for the tiger. That man’s name was pretty recognizable, Leonardo DiCaprio.

Eventually our people thought we should meet, and we did, in Hollywood. He’s energetic, informed and willing to put his efforts where his heart is. I liked him right away. What was to be a 30-minute chat lasted late into the evening, and by the time I left his house, we had co-created the concept of Lyon — directly sourced third world high end products for American consumers where we drive all the profits back to the people, animals and environments that most need our help. A week later I was in the mountains of Haiti — on an extended trip that took me around the world, from Madagascar to the mountain peaks of Peru.

Q.
Is there a sense, either in Haiti or more generally, that the supply end can match the demand if this kind of coffee initiative expands beyond the sustainability “niche”?
A.
Before the embargo, Haiti produced millions of pounds of high-grade heirloom coffee to a world eager to consume every drop. Today, that torrent is just a trickle while the coffee infrastructure lays idle. All this while the world’s demand for high-grade heirloom ecologically sound and directly sourced coffee is massive and growing bigger each year.

What is important to note is that Haiti grows an exceedingly rare plant variety, the un-mutated offspring of the original coffee plant discovered in the forests of Ethiopia, while the rest of the world is cutting the last of them away and replacing them with mutant hybrids. Ask any good geek worth his weight in tip money what Typika is, and his eyes will glass over. Chefs are a bottomless pit for Typika, even though they do not know the variety. Soon, it will be very hard to find true heirloom coffee (Typika) outside a few small countries.

The reason Haitians use this plant is because of hurricanes – the same for Cuba. This plant has not been modified to be short and grow 20 times the amount of fruits per plant, and grow in direct sunlight and require tons of chemicals. The modified plant, particularly when loaded with all that fruit, snaps under the force of even a modest wind. Typika can handle a hurricane.

I do not worry that this small half of a small island will upset the supply and demand balance of high end coffee, my worries are more fundamental, like getting all my farmers through the season in one piece.

[It may not be a recent article but as the coffee industry evolves you'll notice a lot more Grower Direct coffee being offered by specialty coffee stores - su]

By PETER MEEHAN Published NYT: September 12, 2007
DUANE SORENSON had planned to fly to Yemen, rattle up dirt roads in dusty four-by-fours and dart through the Arabian sky in prop planes as he toured the country searching for open-minded coffee growers. Mr. Sorenson, who is the owner of Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland, Ore., intended to offer the farmers more money than anyone ever had before in return for a promise to improve their crops.

But a mix-up with his passport left him stuck in Washington. Disappointed but undeterred, he boarded a plane for Guatemala City instead. When he arrived, he ate tortillas, beans and tilapia with the owner of Finca El Injerto in the western Huehuetenango department, one of the most celebrated coffee farms in Central America.

It was a roundabout way to go for a meal. But Mr. Sorenson and a few like-minded coffee hunters around the country will go almost anywhere, do almost anything and pay almost any price in pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee. For people at Stumptown and friendly competitors like Intelligentsia Coffee Roasters and Tea Traders of Chicago and Counter Culture Coffee of Durham, N.C., long trips to remote farms for meetings without immediate payoffs are necessary steps in a much bigger goal: reinventing the coffee business.

“These people have an almost unbelievable ability to source exquisite, unique coffees,” Mark Prince, senior editor at the coffee appreciation Web site coffeegeek.com, wrote in an e-mail.

Connie Blumhardt, publisher of the coffee magazine Roast, concurs: “They are certainly the leaders right now. Some smaller roasters just worship them, like they’re these coffee megagods.”

“Direct trade” is the most popular name of the style of business practiced by these coffee companies, known as roasters. It means, most simply, that the roasters buy their beans directly from the farms and cooperatives that grow them, not from brokers.

The term was popularized by Geoff Watts, director of coffee and green coffee buyer for Intelligentsia. (Mr. Sorenson’s air miles last week paled beside those of Mr. Watts, who flew to Burundi with another coffee roaster to consult with groups who want to revive that country’s once-great coffee tradition.)

Direct trade — which also means intensive communication between the buyer and the grower — stands in stark contrast to the old (but still prevalent) model, in which international conglomerates buy coffee by the steamer ship, through brokers, for the lowest price the commodity market will bear.

It also represents, at least for many in the specialty coffee world, an improvement on labels like Fair Trade, bird-friendly or organic. Such labels relate to how the coffee is grown and may persuade consumers to pay a little extra for their beans, but offer no assurance about flavor or quality. Direct-trade coffee companies, on the other hand, see ecologically sound agriculture and prices above even the Fair Trade premium both as sound business practices and as a route to better-tasting coffee.

By spending months every year visiting farms, these roasters seek to offer coffee that is produced as well as it can be, bought responsibly and roasted carefully. They aim, simply, to sell the best coffee possible.

“It’s an exploration of coffee’s flavor, really” is how George Howell explains his mission. Mr. Howell, who runs George Howell Coffee Company, a roaster based in Acton, Mass., has had a hand in practically every lurch forward in the quality coffee scene since he started out in the business in 1974. “We’re finding flavors we’ve never ever tasted before, different fruit and floral flavors from really pristine, clean coffees. These are flavors that have been lost or diluted in the old methods of blending coffee down to an average product.”

In many ways, the direct-trade roasters are building on the foundation laid by companies like Peet’s and, later, Starbucks, which went outside the commodity system to find superior coffee. But, Ms. Blumhardt said, those companies are too big to comb over every bean in every sack the way some direct-trade companies do. Starbucks bought more than 300 million pounds of coffee last year; Intelligentsia, the biggest of this group, bought 2 million pounds.

Sometimes roasters find coffee farms through serendipity. Peter Giuliano, co-owner and director of coffee for Counter Culture Coffee, spoke with palpable excitement about stumbling upon a Central American farm planted with geishas, a plant known to yield especially high quality beans. (This year, Esmeralda Especial, a Panamanian coffee produced exclusively from geisha beans, earned the highest price ever paid in a coffee auction.)

More often, roasters connect with growers through tasting competitions. The most prestigious of these are the annual Cup of Excellence competitions, now organized in eight coffee-growing countries by a United States-based nonprofit group, an event Mr. Prince of Coffeegeek calls “Coffee’s Olympics.” These blind-tasting competitions take as long as 10 days, after which the organizers auction the coffees online to bidders around the world, who compete fiercely for the beans.

Mr. Sorenson recently spent more than $100,000 for a batch of coffee beans that took top honors at this year’s Nicaraguan Cup of Excellence competition. The coffee, from Las Golondrinas, Marcio Benjamín Peralta Paguaga’s farm in Nicaragua, sold for $47.06 a pound, just shy of $40 more than the winner earned last year. But for Mr. Sorenson, who said the unusual “mango, peach, cantaloupe and jasmine flower” flavors made it the finest Nicaraguan coffee he had ever tasted, it was worth it.

Counter Culture started buying from Finca Mauritania, Aída Batlle’s farm on the slopes of the Santa Ana volcano in El Salvador, after the farm’s coffee won attention at the 2003 Cup of Excellence in El Salvador. After working with Ms. Batlle for a few years, visiting the farm regularly and sampling beans produced under a range of conditions, Mr. Giuliano has asked her to pick the coffee berries when “half the fruit is at a burgundy red ripeness and the rest when it’s bright red,” a mix that Mr. Giuliano says yields just the right sweetness in a finished cup. (Counter Culture supplies the house blends for two of New York City’s most highly regarded cafes, Café Grumpy and Ninth Street Espresso.)

One of the most effective methods of encouraging change turns out to be as simple as sharing a few cups of coffee with the people who grow it. Obvious as it seems, this was far from common practice until about 10 years ago.

Mr. Watts said that cupping (coffee lingo for the formal, multistep tasting process used to evaluate quality) can help growers understand what a buyer is looking for. “There has to be a real financial incentive for every incremental improvement in quality, but it can’t be mysterious,” he said. “It has to be objective. The grower has to have every reason to believe that his investment in his farm is an investment in himself, not just him doing what some crazy American wants him to. And when they have the same evaluative skills that we do, they can taste their coffees and know what they could be worth.”

Direct trade relationships typically mean that the roaster guarantees to pay well more than the going Fair Trade price for coffees that meet an agreed-upon standard based on a cupping scale. If the coffees score above that standard, growers earn even more.

Cuppings also help roasters select the best of the already very good coffees they will offer their customers. On his most recent visit to Finca El Puente, a coffee farm in the mountainous southwestern corner of Honduras, Mr. Giuliano tasted his way through 68 tiny batches of coffee. The beans were separated by the section of the farm on which they were grown, the way a winery might segregate grapes by vineyard, and by when they were picked.

The cupping gave the Caballero family, which owns Finca El Puente, a look into the qualities Mr. Giuliano values in a finished cup so they can trace those qualities back to a particular patch of land, or a type of coffee shrub, or a degree of ripeness at picking time. For his part, Mr. Giuliano got the chance to pick the best lots for this year’s El Puente blend. Any batch that was particularly exceptional he would pay more for, roast separately and sell at a premium as a “micro-lot.”

Mr. Howell recently cupped through a selection of beans with Alejandro Cadena from Virmax, a quality-minded Colombian exporter. Mr. Cadena had brought beans sorted by size to explore the effect of bean size on a finished cup. Mr. Howell has found that smaller beans from Brazil have brighter acidity than larger beans. But bean size had no discernible effect on Mr. Cadena’s Colombian coffees, a finding Mr. Howell attributed to the mixed varieties of coffee plants used by the tiny farms Virmax represents.

Cupping is also a way of pinpointing where in the production or importing chain even the most extraordinary coffees can be damaged. At a recent cupping at his headquarters in Acton, Mr. Howell demonstrated some of the dangers. Coffee that had spent too long in a jute bag, for instance, was contrasted with some that was stored in plastic.

Sometimes simple conversation ends up making an impact on the finished coffee and on the people who grow it. On a trip to Rwanda in 2006, Mr. Sorenson asked one of the farmers in the Koakaka Koperative y’Abanhinzi Ya Kawa Ya Karaba — a cooperative that supplies him with the Rwandan beans he sells as “Karaba” — what Stumptown could do to help him improve his coffees.

“He — his name is Innocent — said a bike would help him with transportation of ripe cherry to the mills,” Mr. Sorenson said, using the term for the fruit that contains the coffee bean. “Which would improve the coffee’s quality, since coffee needs to be milled within hours of picking.” Coffee berries that sit in the sun can ferment, yielding off flavors that can taint a batch of beans.

After returning from the trip, Mr. Sorenson started a nonprofit group called Bikes to Rwanda. This April, 400 bikes specially engineered for carrying heavy loads of coffee over hilly Rwandan terrain were delivered to the cooperative just in time for the harvest.

Though altruism played a part in that effort, Mr. Sorenson said he sees paying high prices for beans and treating his growers as partners as the only way to get the quality he wants. “It’s not charity,” he said. “Our producers invest back into their workers, coffee shrubs, equipment and land. We know this is happening because of all the time we spend with them throughout the year, on their farms and in their homes.”

But it’s not a point he feels the need to argue stridently, because the proof — for anyone to taste — is in the cup.

National Post Jennifer Sygo Nov 22, 2011

That cappuccino ritual? It’s full of antioxidants, isn’t a diuretic, and if the caffeine keeps you from sleeping, just try decaf.

Are there certain foods that don’t receive the respect they deserve? In this second instalment of a two-part series, we’ll continue to take a look at foods that have, for one reason or another, fallen out of nutritional favour. Notably, all of the foods on both last week’s and this week’s lists are whole foods (coffee arguably being the one exception), meaning that their nutritional value hasn’t been diminished through processing.

POTATOES Almost every diet book now puts potatoes on the “no-no” list. You’ll frequently hear of recommendations that we reduce our intake of “whites,” namely white flour, white sugar, white rice and white bread. Potatoes are usually included in this list. The problem seems to be the potato’s ability to rapidly raise blood sugar, otherwise known as its glycemic index.

Unlike nutritional weaklings like white sugar, however, a whole potato is rich in a variety of nutrients, in particular fibre (four grams per medium potato with skin) and potassium. In fact, when it comes to potassium, which seems to play an important role in blood pressure control, potatoes are a chart-topper: a medium potato provides 610 mg of the mineral (the recommended daily intake is 4,700 mg), compared with 422 mg in the more ballyhooed banana.

Moreover, while boiled, peeled potatoes eaten on their own are high on the glycemic index (meaning they do cause blood sugar levels to rise quickly after eating), a modest-sized baked potato with skin, eaten as part of a mixed meal (i.e. with protein and fats) generally has a glycemic index in the moderate range. For my money, potatoes can still be a part of a healthy diet, but your best bet is to keep the skin on and keep the portions moderate — a half of a baked potato is plenty for most of us.

SOYBEANS I actually feel a little sorry for soybeans. For some reason, we feel compelled to take a rather nutritious and tasty bean and do all sorts of inhumane things to it (no offence to the soygurt fans out there). Yet if we would just leave the soybean alone and treat it the same way we do chick peas or lentils, it would hold up just fine, both in taste and nutritional value. Case in point: a half-cup serving of cooked soybeans ranks among the richest food sources of potassium, magnesium, fibre and iron, and is a good source of calcium. On top of that, plain old soybeans taste just fine, and work well in bean salads, soups, or even on their own with a bit of tomato or hot sauce.

WATERMELON Who doesn’t like watermelon? It tastes like summer and childhood, all rolled into one, and after spending a few years in nutritional purgatory for its sugar content, watermelon is back. Not only is watermelon modest in calories (there are 86 calories in 1/16 of a melon), but a single wedge will provide you with a third of your daily vitamin A, which is important for bone and eye health, and nearly 40% of your daily vitamin C requirement. Watermelon also derives its red colour from carotenoids, the same family of nutrients found in tomatoes and strawberries, and is rich in lycopene, an antioxidant that is thought to play a role in cancer prevention.

COFFEE Let’s get this out of the way first: coffee, and more specifically, caffeine, is not a diuretic. Yes, you may have heard this numerous times on TV, and even in your doctor’s office, but it is a myth, provided that you consume it regularly (you do see a modest increase in urine output when you first start to consume caffeine, but the effect wears off in a few days).

On the other hand, coffee is quite rich in antioxidants, and even contains modest amounts of magnesium and B vitamins, which can become nutritionally relevant for those who drink multiple cups per day. More importantly, while we see evidence of impaired glucose metabolism in the hours after drinking a cup of coffee (it seems to make you less sensitive to insulin, the hormone that helps control blood sugar), numerous studies suggest that coffee consumption could reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and even some cancers.

Disease prevention aside, the effect of all that caffeine on your quality of life might make for some food for thought as you lie in bed, staring at the ceiling after your sixth cup of the day. But good news there, too: Research has shown that you can obtain a similar health benefit from a cup of decaf.

–Jennifer Sygo is a registered dietitian at Cleveland Clinic Canada, which offers executive physicals, sports medicine and prevention and wellness counselling in Toronto.

National Post Jennifer Sygo Mar 27, 2012 – 9:30 AM ET

If you have the enzyme to break down coffee properly, then recent studies have shown the caffeinated beverage may actually hold significant health benefits, or at the very least not be nearly as dangerous as once thought, even among people drinking four cups a day.

Is coffee good for you? The question would have seemed a little ridiculous just a few years ago, but as evidence mounts that coffee drinkers are less likely to suffer from numerous chronic diseases, researchers are increasingly calling into question the belief that your morning cup of joe is a nutritional no-no. So, once you are done hugging your newspaper, let’s take a closer look at the state of the evidence when it comes to this nutritionally enigmatic (yet wildly popular) beverage.

As the second most commonly consumed beverage in the world (water is first, in case you are wondering; no, Captain Canada, it’s not beer), to say that coffee is a global phenomenon is an understatement. Yet, despite its popularity, there exist long-held beliefs that caffeinated coffee is a) a diuretic (it’s not, as long as you consume it regularly), and b) bad for you, especially when it comes to your heart health.

Despite this perception, according to a number of population studies, most recently published in the April edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, even heavier coffee drinkers (usually defined as those who drink more than four cups — and we mean eight-ounce cups, not 20-ounce ventis — per day) are no more likely to develop heart disease than low- or non-consumers.

And all of this is evident despite the fact that caffeinated coffee causes a blood pressure spike in the hours after its consumption, which suggests there is something more complex at work than caffeine’s impact on individual risk factors.

Similarly, while caffeine can cause a short-term spike in blood sugar, especially after a carbohydrate-rich meal (think coffee and a doughnut, or coffee and a bagel), an effect that is especially concerning for diabetics, population studies suggest those who consume four to six cups of coffee per day may actually be at a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.

And finally, while some components of coffee have been associated with the development of cancer cell lines, at least when studied in petri dishes or in animal models, when we compare coffee consumption and various types of cancer, we tend to see that coffee is not associated with cancer risk over a lifetime.

Much of its controversy stems from the fact that, not only does coffee contain caffeine — in and of itself a challenge to study — but numerous compounds such as caffeic acid and magnesium, some of which act as antioxidants, while others improve blood pressure control or insulin sensitivity over time. Some of coffee’s benefits could also arise after habitual consumption: There is evidence our bodies adapt to coffee, and our metabolic response changes over time. Add to that the myriad ways to prepare coffee (drip, boiled, espresso, etc.), each of which affects coffee’s properties, and there are enough potential complicating factors to leave researchers with a headache that could rival a coffee-lover’s in withdrawal.

And then there is the genetic factor: While most individuals are what we might call “fast caffeine metabolizers” — those whose bodies can readily break down caffeine into its by-products — a segment of the population is genetically unable to produce CYP 1A2, the primary enzyme responsible for breaking down caffeine. These so-called “slow caffeine metabolizers” seem to be at a higher risk of developing heart disease when consuming what might otherwise be considered normal, or safe, amounts of caffeine.

For slow metabolizers, caffeine intake in excess of 200 mg per day — the amount in about a cup-and-a-half of coffee, or about half of what Health Canada deems the safe upper intake level — may be enough to cause harm.

When it comes to understanding coffee, it’s clear we still have much to learn. As outlined in an editorial accompanying the recent American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study, while there is some good evidence it might not be as harmful as once thought, and possibly even a bit good for us, we still need more research on the impact of caffeinated coffee on those with existing medical conditions, such as high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes. Also, while there is much research on the effects of filtered coffee on our health, there is less evidence on non-filtered coffee, which contains compounds that may harm our heart. Finally, while the authors of the population studies are able to control for numerous other risk factors, such as smoking or activity levels, in their analyses, there remains the possibility that coffee drinkers are healthier in some other, as-yet-undetected way, perhaps because of increased social interaction. Having said all of this, since there is evidence that decaf coffee is roughly on-par with its caffeinated counterpart when it comes to health benefits, consumers still have the luxury of choice — without having to stay up all night.

—Visit Health Canada’s website for safe caffeine guidelines for different age groups.

—Jennifer Sygo is a registered dietitian at Cleveland Clinic Canada, which offers executive physicals, sports medicine and prevention and wellness counselling in Toronto.

By PATRICK FARRELL Published: March 13, 2012

FOR a holiday that has come to involve so much alcohol, St. Patrick’s Day is badly in need of a good drink. Beer, even tinted green, is too workaday. Stout is too stolid. Sweet liqueurs like Irish Mist and Baileys Irish Cream are just too everything.

But Irish coffee — there’s something worth a toast: the boggy funk of whiskey rising through an equatorial brew to meet a cool cloud of whipped cream. In my family it’s a sort of minor Sunday devotion, with an attendant after-dinner ritual of rummaging for the special cups, worrying the cream and carefully staging the whole vertical assembly. My four siblings and I grew up watching our father, an aeronautical engineer, as he tried to instruct reluctant waiters and bartenders in its proper construction.

Sadly, in the era of serious coffee and cocktails, the drink has acquired the disreputable image of a mongrel, a shady ancestor of the booze-laced energy beverage.

It isn’t even really all that Irish. But then, neither is St. Patrick’s Day as celebrated in the United States. Like the holiday we know here, Irish coffee is a truly Irish-American creation — a mere shot’s worth of tradition percolated and whipped up into something over the top.

Its beginnings were trans-Atlantic, not to mention aeronautical. Legend dictates that it was first served in the 1940s at a County Limerick air terminal that was later replaced by Shannon Airport, supposedly to passengers stranded in a winter storm who needed both a quick pick-me-up and a stiff belt. In the ’50s, a travel writer took it to San Francisco, where the Buena Vista Cafe made it a signature.

And in the ’60s, my dad — a bagpiper and ardent third-generation Irish-American — first tasted it while on a business trip to that city; he brought a recipe home to Connecticut. He didn’t begin buttonholing restaurant personnel until years later, after being served all manner of misguided variations — with Scotch, Southern Comfort, crème de menthe, lashings of sugar, or a vigorous and disastrous stirring. Trips to Ireland turned up better models, though sometimes marred with muddy brown sugar or thin, unwhipped cream. The final straw came during a Florida vacation: Reddi-wip, sprinkles and a cherry.

Next time, he was ready with the directions, which couldn’t be much simpler: Start with a tall, narrow ceramic cup (not the glass mug you get everywhere, which hemorrhages heat and burns fingers). Add the lightest touch of sugar (the whiskey has enough sweetness). Strong, hot coffee. A liberal scoop of schlag, thick and cool enough to stand aloof. No stirring. No nonsense.

And the whiskey? Oddly, for all the precision of the drill, the truly Irish part is left to personal taste. My father prefers garden-variety Jameson’s — smooth and fruity, not overly expensive or fussy — but has not turned down Bushmills. Powers whiskey lends more, well, power. Knappogue Castle produces something more refined. The type of coffee, too, is up to you; though a full-bodied bean works best, a French or Italian roast may be too bitter to let the spirit assert itself.

But don’t relax just yet. Take care to sip your coffee through the cream, savoring the communion of cold and warmth, stimulation and intoxication, Ireland and America. Slainte.