Daniel's World of Coffee

The Best Shoes For Traveling to Origin

In the last five years I have traveled to origin 30 times, to the best of my recollection. That's about 6 trips a year, spread over 12 or 13 countries, mostly in Latin America, but also in Africa and Asia.

On all but one of those trips, I have taken the same pair of shoes. Not the same brand, no... the exact same pair of shoes. These shoes set me back about 65 bucks, if I recall. I've worn them in Ethiopia, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Panama, Peru, El Salvador, the Philippines, etc.

The one time I didn't bring these shoes, it was purely by accident. It was my first trip to the Philippines, and I was apparently so excited by the prospect of white sand beaches that I forgot to pack sensible coffee farm shoes. Ironic because some of the roughest terrain I've encountered in my coffee travels was on that trip, in the tribal lands of Mindanao. I had to hike the whole slippery mess in thin-soled tennis shoes. My friends showed me infinite patience as I fumbled around helplessly in the muck and mire. (Hi Zee!)

Anyway, I come from Seattle originally, where people wear mountain-climbing gear to formal events. It's actually become a point of pride for me to wear snazzy city shoes whenever possible, just to stand out from the NorthFace and New Balance. But when you're hiking a real, functioning coffee farm at the peak of harvest, style somehow takes a back seat.

The shoes I have are from ECCO. I think they might have discontinued the exact model I have. They're somewhat similar to these, but low top and less space-age looking. I like the ones I have because if you dust them off and spit-shine 'em, they don't look too bad in a city setting. But the main reason I like them is because they are as tough as nails, but very comfortable. I've abused the ever-living hell out of these shoes and never once replaced the laces or even thought about them. I just toss them in my bag when I'm headed to origin and then inflict the pain.

Here's a mash-up video of my most recent trip to Ethiopia and a trip I made to Honduras in 2011. In the first part (grainy, sorry) I am stepping on a rural road between two farms, on my way up to the waterfall at Wondo Genet in Sidamo. I started filming because I was amazed at the thin crust that overlaid the two inches of powder-thin red dust that made up the road. It felt like walking on the moon, except it was about 100 degrees and the sun was BRUTAL. In the second part, as you can tell from the angle of my legs, I'm stumbling down a very steep, very muddy and slippery hillside in Honduras. Same shoes, two years and half a world apart.

So anyway, I don't work for ECCO and they aren't giving me any money. But if you are heading to a coffee farm soon (and if you're not.. why not???), maybe check out some of these shoes.

Here's my pair in all their dusty glory after I got back from my most recent trip last week:

Roasting at Origin Article

I've got a short article in the March issue of Fresh Cup magazine. It's not available online, but for those of you in the coffee industry, you should be reading Fresh Cup anyway!

It's for the "Roaster's Realm" column, and I wrote about roasting quality coffee at origin. Often you can't get very well-roasted coffee in producing countries. There's some striking irony when you are surrounded by lovely, green, growing coffee trees and drinking a cup of something that's diner quality at best.

But things are changing. I interviewed three quality-oriented roasters I have worked with in three different countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico), and came up with some interesting results. Check it out.

Giuliano Makes Tortillas

Back in July, after teaching some roasting seminars in Guatemala City, I spent a morning in the nearby town of Antigua with some coffee friends. Peter Giuliano, one of the key leaders of the specialty coffee industry in the United States — and indeed the world — was with us, too.

You could write an entire book and still not name all the important work Peter has done in the coffee industry. His company, Counter Culture Coffee, has helped revolutionize the way people grow, buy, roast, and drink coffee. He's also been a key leader at the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

But in addition to being a coffee guru, Peter's also just a fun guy to be around. He's willing to try anything, and his enthusiasm for life and for people is contagious. If you're having a hard time getting motivated on a Monday morning, check out Peter cheerfully learning how to make tortillas in Guatemala... and this was on a Saturday morning after a long week of work and travel. And he never lets dropping a few get him down.

By the way, the tortillas were delicious.

Footage from Guatemala

I was in Guatemala twice recently, at the end of July and again at the end of August. Here is some nice footage I shot while visiting Finca Santa Isabel in southern Guatemala. This is a 100% organic farm, a fairly large one, family-owned and -operated.

I must have seen about 50 different species of butterflies here in one morning, and some truly beautiful tropical birds. You can't see any on this video, but you can hear all the insects happily chirping away in the morning sun. Guatemala had one of its rainiest years on record so far this year; my host at Santa Isabel told me he had never seen the farm so muddy (he grew up there). But I was very lucky and, aside from one nighttime downpour, things were sunny and beautiful while I was there, as you can see in this video.

Update

I've been taking a nice summer hiatus, working on a few projects here and there, not all of them coffee-related.

This week I will be in Guatemala presenting a seminar on coffee roasting at the annual National Coffee Congress of Guatemala, put on by Anacafé.

After Guatemala, I am traveling to Panama to visit the farms on some friends in the Boquete/Volcán region, in the western mountain highlands of Panama. I'll be there for several days, then it's back to the United States.

I'm taking my camera of course, and when I return, I will have some pictures and video to share, plus hopefully a little insight into the coffee scene in those two famous coffee countries. You can expect fresh material by the end of the month.

I hope everyone's having a lovely summer in North America, or wherever you are.

So Whatsatenango?

Yesterday I reviewed a coffee that was identified as an "Acatenango." This is probably an unfamiliar designation to most people.

Acatenango is a volcano in southern Guatemala, near the town of Antigua. "Antigua" is already a well-known coffee designation in the specialty coffee world, along with Huehuetenango further to the north. The coffee from Acatenango might also be called an Antigua coffee, but it really depends on how you draw those boundaries.

All this is confusing because there is no centralized body that determines coffee origin names. For instance one of the best known Ethiopian designations is "Sidamo," and another is "Yirgacheffe." Well, strictly speaking Yirgacheffe is a town within the province of Sidamo. It's all very tough to follow. But that's another topic for another day.

The Acatenango coffee got me thinking, though. It's one of my favorite coffees this year. Huehuetenango (pronounced way-way-te-nan-go) produces great coffee too. And one of the most beautiful and unique coffee regions I have visited is in the north of El Salvador along the border with Honduras in the province of Chalatenango, home to incredibly unique herbal pacamara coffees grown in red clay soil. What's up with the tenangos, you might ask?

"Tenango" is just a suffix in the Nahuatl language that means "place of" or "home of". Huehuetenango, for example, means Place of the Elders. Quetzaltenango means home of the quetzal bird (isn't he handsome?). Many times speakers will actually drop the "tenango" and just call Huehuetenango, "Huehue" or Chalatenango, "Chalate." This is not just a gringo-ism, but done by local speakers all the time.

Nahuatl is an Aztec language, or more precisely a descendent thereof. It's mostly spoken in Mexico, but you can see there are pockets of Nahuatl dialects that were spoken in Guatemala and El Salvador. Hence all the tenangos. You might say that Central America is the Tenango-tenango, home of the tenango places.

This map shows lavender where Nahuatl was spoken in the past, and white spots where it still lives on today.

We also get our words coyote, avocado, chocolate, and shack from Nahuatl, among many others. And from the places that bear the names of the Nahuatl-speakers, we get some of the best coffee in the world.

Coffee: Intelligentsia's Guatemala Itzamna — La Soledad

Late spring and early summer are my favorite time of year for new coffees. This is when all the fresh new Central American coffees come in. As much as I love Ethiopian coffee and Kenyan coffee, if I had to choose only one region to drink for the rest of my life, it would be good old backyard C.A.

It's mid-August now, and the 2008-09 Centrals have been around long enough for me to feel comfortable with them. I tasted a lot of good coffees from El Salvador again this year, some good Nicaraguas, and one killer Honduras. But lately I've been gravitating to Intelligentsia's Guatemala "Itzamna" from Finca La Soledad. (Itzamna is the mark created by Intelligentsia, it means "Goddess of the Harvest"; La Soledad is the farm that this particular lot comes from... they also have regular Itzamna and Itzamna: La Maravilla).

This coffee stood out like a champ the first time I cupped it blind at the Soho lab. It's very lush and round while still ringing with clear sweetness and a full, forward acidity. Really fantastic stuff. These are small lots that Intelligentsia brings in, and they seem to vanish just as soon as they appear. I imagine there can't be that much of La Soledad left. Get your mitts on some if you can.

I've been drinking La Soledad in a Chemex, dosing about 33 grams to 14 ounces of water to get a 12 ounce batch. Perfection in the morning, I tell you.

One of the keys to great coffee is clean processing. Look at this picture of the processing facility at La Soledad that I lifted from the Intelligentsia website:

Now that is clean processing.

Finally, here's some of what Geoff Watts, buyer for Intelligentsia, has to say about this great coffee:

La Soledad (Acatenango) contributes a rich milk chocolate and butterscotch sweetness, and this year the farm finished top 20 in the Cup of Excellence—hats off to them for this recognition of their achievement. It is one of my favorite farms because the forward progress and investment they are making to advance quality and become a standard setter for social and environmental responsibility on the farm needs no explanation; it stands out every time I visit. They've just completed the final stage on their very impressive water treatment system and have started work on a cupping lab that will be built on the farm itself. They are currently working on some diversification with an innovative plan to produce avocado oil from the groves of delicious avocado trees on the farm. These guys are the definition of pro-active.