nickbrehanywrites

The future:

Friends meet up at a local cafe. They both order brewed filter coffee, and the total is $25. Coffee isn’t cheap anymore. They take a seat and proceed to catch up while their coffee is brewed with great care and diligence. They’re served and begin to slowly sip.

“I really enjoy her washed Typica. It’s been grown in the family for generations! I can taste the old roots, and the way the flavors capture the landscapes of the Inkawasi Valley. To me this coffee displays that classic citrus and caramel flavor that I can only find in her coffees.”

“I know you love those washed coffees, but for me, the anaerobic quality of this Ethiopian is unreal. It’s so loud and bombastic with layers of fruitiness! I remember drinking their previous harvest, which was more floral, but this year it’s all stone fruit and berries from start to finish.”

The conversation seamlessly oscillates between life and coffee. Before they leave they decide to purchase some retail bags of beans to take home for brewing later. She also picks up a pack of V60 filters, and he grabs the newest edition of Standart to read while he perfects his brews at home.

I’d like to take a moment to explore a similar industry to coffee that may have some insights and answers for us: Wine

Not all that long ago, I began to fall in love with wine, specifically natural wine.

It all started when I agreed to drive a good friend to Chicago. He had a flight out of O’Hare, and if you know anything about O’Hare, you know how nice it is to have a friend drop you off instead of dealing with the whole circus that is parking, catching a shuttle, and getting to the correct terminal.

We’d built in some time to make a couple of stops before heading to the airport. We had a heavy but satisfying ramen lunch, and then dropped by Ipsento for a coffee. As we started walking back to our car, I noticed a wine shop and asked my pal if we could drop in for a few minutes. I knew nothing about wine, but an employee walked me through several options after I described what I loved about coffee. I ended up purchasing a bottle from northern Italy, grown by a relatively small estate. Several months later I finally tried the wine, and what I tasted rocked my world.

All these years later, I’ve become fascinated and captivated with wine. Not merely drinking it, but also the whole lore around wine (especially smallholder-produced natural wine).

It’s got a Pokémon “gotta-catch-em-all” sort of feel as you hunt down and stumble across rare bottles with highly limited quantities available in the world. The playfulness of wine, with the cartoonish labels and the increasingly casual attitude toward enjoyment makes it an endlessly fun hobby to get into.

As I’ve become more familiar with a couple of wine shops in Chicago and Michigan, the owners and workers have come to know my preferences and guide me into new tasting experiences I’d never have chosen for myself. I’ve even built up a small but robust stash of wines for special occasions: dinners with friends or annual celebrations of birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries (one bottle for the anniversary of our wedding, another for the anniversary of our first date… why not?)

To me, wine has become accessible to the uninitiated population, for people just like me. The once common snobbery around wine is slowly fading as natural wine in particular has paved a new, almost irreverent path for folks to dive into and explore the world of wine without judgment or pretense. A great wine bar now offers both the classic wines like those of Burgundy and the Rhone, with their strong tannins and challenging complexity, while also offering playful natural wines that sparkle with unconventional flavor nuances.

Believe it or not, I think the wine industry has something to teach the coffee industry about not only processing, but also about the people behind the product.

Today if I walk into a wine shop and ask about a super funky natural, or a classic Italian red, no one bats an eye. They’re usually just stoked I’m interested at all.

The inspiration behind this blog post came from a phone call I had with a wine professional a handful of weeks ago. I was seeking out a specific wine from a producer whose work I’d come to know. As we spoke, I knew I had to share her insights, which gave me a completely new perspective on coffee:

“As we taste through selections from a variety producers, we start to notice certain trends. Some producers are focused on highlighting their regional or microclimatic flavors. They want you to taste their wine and know it’s from their home town, or their estate. Other producers have opted to create wines that taste less like a place and more like a style. For example, some producers we buy from want you to taste the odd and unconventional fruitiness of their wines. But for the best producers, regardless of style, we can taste their personality in the wine. We can tell the difference between neighbors by the way they process their wines, and how their philosophies result in distinct, unmistakable experiences.”

You might be wondering what in the world all this talk of wine has anything to do with solving the deeply destructive problems of the coffee industry, but I dare you to re-read the quote a bit closer.

One massive difference between coffee and wine is the emphasis placed on the producer of the product. Outside of a few noteworthy examples, individual coffee farms are not often recognized for their work, and definitely not in the same manner that vintner (or winemaker) is. In the world of wine, consumers begin to find producers whose wines they enjoy, and then seek out their wines everywhere they go. Even small estate producers can become heroes to those seeking the unique and captivating experiences they create in their wines!

For a multitude of reasons, this sort of recognition for coffee farmers is much more difficult. But I do think it brings up the harder question: why is coffee faceless and nameless? Why do we refuse to acknowledge the people behind our coffees?

I think the reason is because it keeps coffee cheap. The anonymity of coffee production encourages low prices, which ultimately places coffee farmers in extractive and exploitative relationships. If we can’t see it, it doesn’t exist, right?

When I think about the specialty coffee at large, I truly wonder why we’ve forgone creating a collective vision for the future for our industry. It would appear to me the wine industry has continually embraced the people behind the experiences created in the glass, and I believe specialty coffee should be doing this too. Without a collective vision for the future of the specialty coffee industry, we’re left debating processing and roasting styles instead of identifying and honoring the people who make coffee a reality.

 The most important question of our time isn’t whether co-ferements are better than washed coffees, but rather what are the ultimate end goals for the specialty coffee industry? This is a much bigger question and it beckons us to rethink the roles we play in the industry. It’s ultimately a question of vision and intention; what direction are we heading in and why? 

In my opinion, we as an industry lack a collective, holistic vision for the future of specialty coffee, and because we lack this vision, we lack the means to address problems of inequality, inequity, and exploitation. It’s as though faced with a serious illness and have decided that band-aids and ibuprofen will cure us. 

So I return to the opening story. Part of my vision for the future of coffee is not merely more flavors available to customers, but a richer experience that draws customers into the history and meaning behind their cups. Instead of insisting on one style or another, we’ll offer different kinds of experiences, all with the goal of giving farmers more recognition for their craft, ultimately elevating their status to the artisans and craftspeople they truly are. Because let’s be honest here, whether it’s a fully fruited carbonic or an ethereal washed Gesha, the magic behind the coffee starts with a passionate person who brings the coffee to life. 

I imagine a future where this is how we speak of coffee farmers. Right now we’re a long ways away from getting the average customer to see coffee cultivation for the craft it truly is. But if we want coffee to become truly sustainable for the people who produce it, we must do our best to elevate their work. We must find ways to justify to our customers why coffee cannot remain cheap, and I think that means speaking to the talent, dedication, and passion of the frequently unseen people behind coffee. This is a much greater challenge for our industry than debating fermentation styles, but maybe it’s exactly the kind of challenge we need to move our industry forward.