The Nod: Rwanda’s Coming Out Party
Each week we receive The Nod…kind of a coffee digest from Intelligentsia’s Green Coffee Buyer, Geoff Watts. It is always interesting, but some weeks it is simply too long. The man has a lot floating around in his head about coffee and its industry. Enjoy this week’s Nod and then enjoy some of Intelligentsia’s beans in brewed form the next time you come to Everyday Joe’s.
Hola:
Sitting in the airport here at O’Hare, wondering why it is that the International Terminal is so under-serviced. It’s unusual as most prime-time international airports go the extra mile to stuff their international terminals full of shops and restaurants and decorations and various amenities designed to impress visitors (and suck cash out of their pockets). O’Hare is, of course, huge, and most terminals there have a decent assortment of places to eat or sit or shop for things you don’t really need. But Terminal 5 is a no-frills stripped down traveler processing unit. And not even a very efficient one. What’s up with that?
I’m here awaiting my flight to London, which will be followed by a flight to Kenya. Tomorrow morning I’ll make the last leg over to Rwanda, where the first-ever Cup of Excellence competition is getting ready to enter the final round. There are several things that are amazing about this:
- Eight years ago there really wasn’t any top quality coffee being produced in Rwanda.
- There are at least three African nations (Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia) that have been involved with Specialty Coffee for many decades and should have been better positioned put on a CoE event.
- Most of the jurors attending the competition have never before purchased Rwandan coffee, and it will be the first time that many of them taste this coffee!
Suffice to say, it is going to be a big coming-out party for this tiny country that is re-shaping itself at an astounding pace after completely falling apart just 15 years ago.
Next week I’ll be reporting on the cuppings and goings-on. I’m especially excited about this since I’ve been so close to the development there over the last five years. It really does feel like a school graduation of sorts, though it is important to remember that everything there is still very fragile and there is still a long way to go before their coffee industry can become strong, self-sufficient, and sustainable. The local industry still doesn’t really know itself. Grower groups there have been guided along a path, but they have much to learn about long-term self-management and are still developing the orienteering skills that will allow them to navigate in a quickly changing coffee world. So I guess that makes it a high-school graduation…
But they have a lot of things going for them. There are a lot of young people that are driving the quality process, and with any luck, they should form a solid base of leadership in the future. They’ve got a natural advantage over Latin American producing countries in the form of abundant labor. There are many people living in a tiny place, and the Rwandans can apply a massive amount of human effort to meticulous process control on the farms, at the washing stations and in the dry mills. At a time when other producing countries are battling real labor shortages, Rwanda is flush. And, at least for now, they’ve got a government that seems to function well and does not create the kinds of obstacles (outdated and archaic coffee industry bureaucracy, endemic corruption) that some of their neighbors deal with.
This jury will be star-studded. Does that sound funny? I think it does, but that’s one of those great things about the coffee world. There are some incredibly dynamic and visionary persons who populate it, people who are very capable of creating wonderful things, who in another life would likely be rock stars or painters or field-leading researchers… or flailing lunatics. (Sometimes it’s a fine line.)
Most of the cuppers are friends I’ve known for many years, folks I’ve spent weeks at a time with in various countries evaluating and discussing the merits of contending coffees, brainstorming ideas for improvement, imagining what this will all look like ten years from now. The Cup of Excellence circuit has made this possible. With nine participating countries (Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Rwanda) there is ample opportunity each year to meet up for the intense four-day cupping that forces us all to dig about as deep into a cup as one can go. Complete dissection. I liken it to taking an MRI on the bean and then sitting around for an hour contemplating and interpreting the images. These cuppers will come from Scandinavia, Japan, Central America, Europe, the US, Australia and Taiwan for the opportunity to taste and discuss these coffee specimens. I’ve been traveling the “circuit” for about the last six years and have made some great friends with other roasters and coffee buyers over time. Most of them will be there in Rwanda. It is without doubt the most talented coffee jury I’ve ever seen. Should be pretty amazing.
Next time you hear from me I’ll be midway through the competition, and there will be a big smile on my face. For a smile on your own face, drink some Itzamna, our Direct Trade Offering from Guatemala.
As always, find our Nods at:
http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/origin/offerings.
Onwards,
Geoff Watts
Green Coffee Buyer
Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea
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