nickbrehanywrites

My first encounter with Mexican coffee was basically an accident. I’d purchased a couple bags from Chiapas to roast for a subscription program, never giving much thought to it. That was, until I tasted it:

Chocolatey. Nutty. Sweet. Citrusy. Simple and round. Easy to drink. A true palate pleaser. It was like drinking a Lager – it’s super sessionable and it never failed to hit the right spot. It held its own when brewed by itself, but also played well in blends, adding a textural depth achieved by few other coffees. It wasn’t as fruity as Guatemalan coffees, or as citrusy as Colombian coffees. And yet, it somehow managed to remain supremely easy-going. It was a rewarding all day sipper.

Though I enjoyed this coffee, I didn’t plan on purchasing more. It just wasn’t in the cards at the time, and I remained focused on Guatemalan coffees for my large-scale purchasing initiatives.

About a year later I encountered Mexican coffee again during what I now call the “Oaxacan revival.” Almost overnight, every roasting company I knew had begun offering Oaxacan coffees. Social media was filled with posts about Oaxaca and how special the coffees were. I hopped on the bandwagon and purchased a few bags for myself.

If Chiapas coffees are like Lagers, Oaxacan coffees are like solid Stouts. They’re more resolutely earthy, walnut-y, and full bodied. They’re even less acidic and more chewy in texture. They bring the bass-note to blends and when brewed by themselves taste like the nicest version of “classic diner coffee.” I enjoyed this profile so much I ended up purchasing hundreds of bags of Oaxacan coffee over the course of a few years.

It was at this exact same time the price the Oaxacan coffee was beginning to skyrocket.

It’s safe to say the coffee industry has a problem with trends. It’s like a toddler who drops their old toy the second they see another kid with a different toy. This is what sourcing coffee can be like: one roaster begins purchasing in Oaxaca, and the next thing you know there’s 500 roasters competing for the exact same coffees. This drives prices into the stratosphere, and creates a boom and bust cycle that ultimately leaves producers in the lurch when a new region becomes all the rage.

As a novice coffee buyer I was complicit in this problem. Like many roasters, I began sourcing large volumes of Oaxacan coffees almost overnight. Each year the price crept upward, and quality did not follow. Each season the coffees were more expensive, and tasted less and less like that first harvest I’d purchased from. By the time I’d stopped sourcing from Oaxaca, the coffees had nearly doubled in price, with blender-quality coffees out-pricing some of the best single farmer lots from neighboring Guatemala, despite presenting anything even comparable quality-wise in the actual cup.

Three weeks ago I was given the opportunity to travel to Mexico in order to meet a cooperative that’s weathered the boom and bust cycles of coffee over the course of decades. My hope in writing this blog series is to draw attention to some of the situations plaguing Mexican coffee from the perspective of a coffee buyer. At times I’ll speak from my own perspective, and at other times I’ll loop in direct quotes from farmers I spoke with. I think it’s good to begin with the Oaxacan boom and bust cycle to set the stage for a deeper discussion on what’s happening in the neighboring state of Chiapas, where I visited.

There are several peculiar factors surrounding Oaxaca as a coffee-producing zone.

First of all, Oaxaca is one of the few areas left in the entire world where you can find Typica-landrace varieties. To the eccentric coffee nerd, the Typica variety holds a mythic status as one of the rarest and oldest varieties of coffee trees left outside of Ethiopia. The allure of this variety alone attracts some roasters into the fold of sourcing and at the same time adds a “premium” cost to the coffee.¹

At the exact same time, the Typica variety is also notorious for producing lower yields, especially when compared to hybrid varieties. The average tree just does not produce all that much coffee each season. On top of this, most of the Typica in Oaxaca is old, like ancient old. As coffee trees age they naturally tend to produce less fruit. There are ways to mitigate this, such as “stumping” a tree or pruning, but eventually the trees will need to be replaced. In Oaxaca, there’s a pervasive tendency to continue stumping and avoid complete renovation. As you can imagine, these factors combined lead to exceptionally low yields from already small family farms.²

In addition, not only are the highly valued Typica trees aging, but so are the farmers working the land. There are reports from coffee importers stating farmers in Oaxaca are on average between 50-70 years old, with some even older.

“But where are the young people?” Simply put, they’re not working in coffee. They’re migrating to the United States and Canada, or to urban centers in search of less laborious and higher value employment. It cannot be understated how arduous coffee farming is. It’s incredibly physically taxing, and unlike some other methods of farming, tremendously volatile. I will speak more on this volatility later.

Lastly, and this is completely my own theory here, but I believe most of the coffee lands around the globe are suffering from immense soil degradation. Without proper biodynamic and regenerative practices, the very land expected to provide coffee trees with essential nutrients are rapidly being depleted. Climate change is only exacerbating this issue. I have a gut feeling many of the farms in Oaxaca exist on lifeless, unhealthy soil. It may only be by a combination of luck and willpower that coffee continues to thrive in these areas at all.

These factors were already at work when the “Oaxacan revival” exploded onto the scene. It’s no mystery why prices ratcheted up each season while quality suffered. The only question left is what now? This “revival” started taking place about 6 years ago. What’s the situation like today?

Just before departing for my travels, I had a conversation with a colleague whose company is engaged in several sourcing initiatives throughout Oaxaca and Chiapas. What he told me was both shocking, and sadly very unsurprising.

Only a few years ago every large multinational coffee importing company was fighting in Oaxaca to source coffee. Competition was fierce and personal, with companies flocking in droves to the same remote neighborhoods creating a bidding war to see who could purchase the largest volumes and the best coffees. This year, most of those companies have evacuated Oaxaca like it never existed. One very well known importing company who was on the forefront of the “revival” told their farmer-partners in Oaxaca they’d be reducing their purchases from nearly 2000 bags to just over 500 this year. To make it even worse, they told them “we can only buy the highest quality, all the other stuff needs to be sold into the local market.” Which is another way of saying you need to sell all the other coffee for a pittance, likely at a loss.

Mexico, like many other coffee producing nations, is subject to insanely manipulative boom and bust cycles. Speaking frankly, they keep farmers in poverty. Young farmers are aware of better opportunities elsewhere, and unless things change, they’re going to continue abandoning coffee farming in droves. The “sourcing initiatives” of larges scale multinationals fail to address the long term challenges and issues faced by farmers and their communities, and frequently leaving them in a worse place than before the hype.

So where did all these huge companies go after abandoning Oaxaca? They moved a few hundred miles to the south, to Chiapas. And competition is just starting to heat up.

1. In my opinion, this premium is superficial and the result of marketing. Just because it’s an older variety doesn’t mean it tastes better. Sometimes it does, but not always. ↩︎
2. For example, most of the coffee farms I’ve heard of in Oaxaca are between 1-5 acres. A healthy 5 acre farm (so on the larger size) will produce approximately 15 exportable bags of coffee per acre. Most farms in Oaxaca can’t even get close to this. One source told me they’re lucky if a farm in Oaxaca produces 5 exportable bags from the entire farm. ↩︎