direct trade redirect: trademarked names

[aaronblanco]

[pruning and replanting this discussion under a new thread, as it could easily hijack what is an amazing thread on direct trade]

as regards trademarked names for blends...

i'm curious, geoff, how offering a trademarked origin blend such as the ones you offer at intelligentsia fits into the direct trade model. surely all of the coffees that are blended to make the particular blend may be directly traded. but then to me that's where it takes a curious turn, because they are blended together and carried under a fabricated/trademarked banner such as "los inmortales" or "la tortuga" or the like. these trademarked names may have nothing whatsoever to do with the farms, the coops, or even the country from which they come.

the reason i ask about this is because i'm not sure how such a phenomenon fits with the larger objectives of direct trade such as traceability and transparency. on the contrary, i would think it tends to obfuscate the facts and frustrates the goal of celebrating farmers and their farms.

what i mean is this. (i will use you, geoff, as an example, which i pray you won't take as singling you out derisively, because there are others out there doing this as well...(and because i've never even met you!)) if i visit the intelligentsia website i will see these great names like fletcha rosa (tm), costa rica, and others, that look a lot like a single farm's or coop's name. i click on that and begin to read a bunch of *great* information and stories about the coffee (singular) and the coop from which the coffee (singular) comes. everything in the descriptions on the website covers this coffee as though it were a coffee that comes from a single farm/coop. well, it'd be more accurate to say that my perception of this coffee is that it is from a single farm because it is identified in a nearly identical way as all the single farm type coffees offered by roasters all over, including intelligentsia. few of the trademarked micro lots i looked at on the site actually indicate that this coffee is one of a blend otherwise. those that did used language to allude to being part of a larger blend that left me to sort of deduce that this would be the case. but it was not really clear. nothing on most of the the tm'ed coffees indicates it is a blend. (indeed, if i do a search for blends on the intelligentsia site these tm'ed coffees won't even show up in the results.) this may be called an "I-mark," for which i could find very little direct information via the website, or, as i've heard others be called, a "mark of origin" or something similar. no one disputes the right of any company to build sales based on proprietary processes, trademarks and the like. but why not indicate that these are in fact blends?

i write this not to condemn or as one who sits on a high perch of greatness. to be sure, i am a newbie hack at roasting who still roasts for my tiny company in relatively microscopic batches FROM MY GARAGE!!! but with all the talk about doing such great work--which i am first in line to celebrate with you, geoff--it is more of a humble challenge to continue doing your great work and to perhaps change some of the descriptor's notes so that in the area of transparency you are blameless. and i didn't p.m. you because i thought it was of interest to the larger forum.

do you think that by not doing so you leave intelligentsia open to criticism in the area of transparency and traceability? how so/not?

for the record, i was completely ignorant of this tm'ed/mark of origin/etc., phenomenon until some friends of mine brought it to my attention. they asked me what i thought about that practice. so...i figured i'd go to the source.

also, it's worth noting again that i have seen very similar marketing from other companies i respect, where it's not immediately evident--in some cases there's little to no revealing information on this at all--that these trademarked names are in fact blends of coffees from a particular country instead of, as many seem to perceive, the trademarked name of a particular farm or coop.

sorry for longwindedness.

[Jaime van Schyndel]

I really don't know what the Mark of Origin(tm?) thing is. I read on Phil's (aka the Onion bean) blog about the new counter culture colombia Golondria and at first I(as well as Phil)thought it was a single estate until an addendum was added later.

I still don't really follow what it's purposes are for, so I would love to hear some discussion by those who know more about this...

[Peter G]

Happy to weigh in here, it's an interesting phenomenon.

There is an old tradition in coffee, called the "mill mark". Basically, in places where various small farmers grow coffee and tender it to a centralized mill, (like most places in the world...) the miller would export the coffee using a "mill mark", at first using the name of the mill, and then inventing a symbolic or traditional name for the coffee exported in bags bearing the mark. Historically, many of the most famous coffeenames were mill marks; Mexico's Marca Tres Flechas or Ethiopia Harrar Horse for example. Neither are farms, they are brand names used by the miller/exporter to signify a particular quality of coffee from a certain group of farms or geographic locale.

As involved, passionate coffeebuyers entered the scene, we began working directly with small farmers and carefully selecting their coffees for inclusion in unique, exportable lots of the highest quality. Therefore, we were presented with a conundrum: what do we call these coffees? We were not likely to use one of the marks owned by the miller/exporters, because the lot created with distinction, sustainability, and excellence in mind is far different than the average "mill mark", a brand created to communicate consistency and homogeneity.

Enter the "roaster mark".

The intention of the Roaster Mark is to put a memorable, significant name on a coffee, which gives the consumer an indication of the craftsmanship and excellence of the component coffees that comprise the final exportable lot. In places like Colombia, Nicaragua, Peru, Ethiopia, Rwanda, etc. the vast majority of coffee farms are very small, producing only a few hundred pounds of coffee per year. A buyer who works with these farms must combine the produce of these farms, and must find some identifying name to call the combined coffee.

In the case of La Golondrina, we worked with dozens of independent farmers, tasting each of their coffees, and combining them to form a coffee we call La Golondrina. These farmers are unaffilliated with a co-op. We chose the name La Golondrina (The Swallow) as a symbol; since the swallow never flies alone and can cross borders easily, we realized it would be a perfect metaphor for farmers and roaster working together across borders to create great coffee. We name each of the farmers on our marketing material for the coffee, but it would be cumbersome to call the coffee "From the farms of - Parménides Ambito
- Jesus Antonio Angel
- Marcelino Camayo
- Gabriel Olcunche
- Miguel Angel Pena
- María Fidelina Pillimué
- Crisanto Polindara
- Pedro Pablo Rivera
- Ismael Tunja
- Julio Sanin Valencia
- Liliana Anaya
- Guilermo Paredes
-etc"

Instead, "La Golondrina" serves as a sort of shorthand for the team that produced the coffee.

The intention of these marks is not to be misleading at all. You will find that those who are engaged in this work (like Intelligentisia, for example) are very transparent about the naming of the coffee.

You might ask: "why not just put the name of the farm on the coffee?" Good question. The fact is, about 80 percent of the world's coffee is produced by very small producers, who produce only a few hundred pounds per year. Many are organized into co-ops, but lots of times, farmer cooperatives have unpronounceable or unmarketable acronyms as names. At the moment I am buying from the following co-ops: AFAORCA, CENAPROC, and KOAKAKA. My favorite is UCRAPROBEX. You have to find better names for these coffees, and I always work directly with the producers to help figure out a name for the coffee (as I know Intelligentsia does)

When possible, though, we do use the name of the actual farm for the coffee. Finca El Puente, Finca Mauritania, and Finca Malacara are all names for specific farms.

Confusing? I hope not, but it can be challenging to communicate all the details of coffee provenance without boring the consumer.

Peter G

[aaronblanco]

peter:

as always, a word of thanks goes out to you for your insights and willingness to "mix it up" (read: set us straight) on a lot of these issues.

specifically though, i'm wondering why it is not more clearly indicated in any of the descriptors or promotional materials such as the labels (or the website, where space is not an issue) that this is, as you call it, a "roaster's mark" or something--anything--that would represent this as from a coop, mill, etc... basically, any hint whatsoever that this is something other than packaging and marketing designed to look very much like a single farm. surely it wouldn't kill the design to add something like that somewhere on a ribbon or on a clour behind the bird or something. [laughing at myself for that!]

even a moderately well-read novice roaster like myself can deduce that this coffee's marketing is meant to evoke those classic mill mark type design elements. and i'm sure many of your customers may be sophisticated enough to do the same, or simply don't care enough about it to bother...which is fine. but for the large majority of consumers a mark such as "la golondrina" will evoke one thing and one thing only: that la golondrina is an actual place where ccc gets the coffee that is in the bag with that label. heck, had i not known any of what you just said, i would've thought it was a single farm/coop, myself. and that's where my question lies. the labeling doesn't give any indication of such. at the very least i would think your great way with words, peter, would at least hint that this is in fact a blend from a single country in your fabulous website descriptions. a cursory review of your site reveals that la golondrina only uses the word "blend" as a verb, never as a noun.

I AM NOT THE LABEL POLICE!!! and i am not poo-pooing you, geoff, or anyone who invokes a "roaster's mark" or some similar branding technique to sell more coffee. (the good Lord knows i respect you and your work, peter!) i'm just trying to ask questions because it's something that hits exactly to the great points geoff was making in his posts on the thread from which this thread was borne. i think it goes directly to complete transparency...something we can all continue to work hard toward.

thanks again.

[jmc]

... but for the large majority of consumers a mark such as "la golondrina" will evoke one thing and one thing only: that la golondrina is an actual place where ccc gets the coffee that is in the bag with that label. heck, had i not known any of what you just said, i would've thought it was a single farm/coop, myself....

I think the large majority of consumers will think that it is a coffee from Colombia. Hopefully, they'll be so blown away that they may start to ask more questions and dig a bit deeper. Unless the mill is isolating and exporting specific lots, the large majority of coffees from Coops are "blends" from multiple farmers.

I think all this information could be presented more clearly, but we do run out of space on our labels! I guess we could include a small booklet that explains our buying practices! We could use a more in depth dictionary on our site, something that explains, Mark, iMark (An Intelligentisa, Roaster's Mark), Lot, Micro-Lot, and some of the terms that if you look hard enough are pretty well explained but aren't totally apparent upon first glance. Geoff is not known for bite-sized tidbits. If you read almost any the specific infosheets on our coffees, ( http://intelligentsiacoffee.com/origin/offerings ), Geoff typically paints a pretty clear picture of what coops we are working with, and how we're building the coffees - usually he addresses this in the first few paragraph of the "Geoff's Notes" section. From the Los Inmortales DT iMark:
The name Los Inmortales ('the Immortals�) conjures up images of Greek gods having a conversation at the peak of a fog-shrouded Mount Olympus or perhaps a group of superheroes banded together to combat oppressive villains. Either way, the name is not without import. It alludes to something worthy of our attention and carries with it a mystique that ignites the imagination.

We chose this name because it captures the gestalt of our ongoing coffee project in El Salvador. Our Salvadoran coffees come from four different estates spread across the best growing regions in the country. These regions have experienced incredible success in national quality competitions and together they have taken 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 11th place in recent Cup of Excellence events. All of them have demonstrated a commitment to sustainable practices on their individual farms.

Los Inmortales represents our best effort to create the most delicious and convincing coffee we can to represent El Salvador. Rather than rely on one farm to consistently reproduce greatness, we invest in many and choose the very top coffee each year to assemble our offering. Only the best coffees make it in, and over the course of a season our Roasters fine-tune the coffee by adjusting the ratio of the individual estate coffees that make up the blend. The result is nothing less than stunning. Imagine a coffee that takes the most compelling and attractive characteristics from multiple growing regions and combines them to create a complete, harmonious, and thoroughly delicious culinary masterpiece. This is what we mean when we talk about 'immortality�.

This year's version was created after extensive cuppings that included more than 150 individual lots, from which only the most enticing were selected. We took a step forward in separation by deconstructing the coffee harvests from all four farms into single days or weeks of picking and then meticulously combining the best ones together to create what is easily our best edition of Los Inmortales to date.

If one of our Direct Trade iMarks is coffee from a single farm, in the case of many of our Micro-Lots, (And in the case of the wonderful Los Delirios...)the farm name is included under the banner of the mark, and we try and present that farmer as the artisan he/she is. Many of the coops we're working with are very large, and although we do cup through hundreds of lots to assemble, lets say Tres Santos, we're not indicating the specific small producers as we work through the coffee. (Something to think about though...)I hope Geoff weighs in, but from my limited experience assembling lots of coffees, many times the individual lots are improved when we start to combine them to create our marks. For instance, I was cupping some pre-ship La Tortuga samples, and we had a few lots with a tiny bit of ferment, not coffees that will qualify for Micro-Lot status, but they may end up being blended with cleaner, crisper lots to create a nice rounded profile with good fruit...

[Peter G]

Aaron-

Thanks for your good questions. I know you are not being critical, but are touching on an interesting feature (transparency, truth in labeling) that is a serious undercurrent of the "new way" of sourcing coffees that Intelligentsia Direct Trade is a great example of.

In your post, you said:

specifically though, i'm wondering why it is not more clearly indicated in any of the descriptors or promotional materials such as the labels (or the website, where space is not an issue) that this is, as you call it, a "roaster's mark" or something--anything--that would represent this as from a coop, mill, etc... basically, any hint whatsoever that this is something other than packaging and marketing designed to look very much like a single farm. surely it wouldn't kill the design to add something like that somewhere on a ribbon or on a clour behind the bird or something. [laughing at myself for that!] ]

Not being snarky, but did you read our page on La Golondrina here? I think it goes into great detail about the way the coffee is sourced, selected, and blended into a lot. It describes La Golondrina (and it is described on the bag label) as "a project", and goes on to list every farmer whose coffee is in the blend by name.

I've wrestled with this issue, because the LAST thing I want to do is give my customers the impression that La Golondrina is a single farm. The reality is so much more interesting and compelling than that! Since La Golondrina is our only mark of this type, we considered calling it "Marca La Golondrina", which may be what you are asking about. It didn't work with the art, so instead we put "produced exclusively for Counter Culture Coffee" to try to indicate the reality. Every bag we ship bears this description:

La Golondrina
Cauca, Colombia
Our unique La Golondrina project gives us direct access to the finest small farms in Cauca, southern Colombia, allowing us to handpick incredible coffees from the countries most talented and dedicated farmers. You will be amazed with the result " layers upon layers of sweet caramel and chocolate, along with a clean, delicate fruitiness reminiscent of black cherry, as well as a subtle wininess. This is what Colombian coffee is meant to be. Enjoy it while it lasts, we only have a limited amount until next year's crop.

And, as I said before there is a longer description (with pictures!) on the website.

If all this is unclear, please help me to figure out how to communicate it more clearly!

Peter

[Sean Starke]

Sounds like you're putting in a lot of good work, Peter.

[Edwin Martinez]

peter,

for your new cauca golondrina labels... can't you just come up with an acronym or something?

- Parménides Ambito
- Jesus Antonio Angel
- Marcelino Camayo
- Gabriel Olcunche
- Miguel Angel Pena
- María Fidelina Pillimué
- Crisanto Polindara
- Pedro Pablo Rivera
- Ismael Tunja
- Julio Sanin Valencia
- Liliana Anaya
- Guilermo Paredes

[geoff watts]

I won't say much at the moment since Pete, Jay, and others have really done a great job of explaining the whole concept of the 'roaster mark', and because I'm in Costa Rica at the moment and sitting on the computer for any length of time is frustrating given how lovely it is outside right now.
But I will give a few nitty gritty details and observations to help complete the picture.
Firstly, the 'mark' serves a very real and important purpose in creating identity for the coffees. As mentioned earlier, many of the best coffees out there come from groups of very small individual farmers, and each year what we do is select the best coffees from the group for inclusion in our Mark. Take Flecha Roja, for example--there are more than 750 farmers who contribute to the cooperative and the mill in Tarrazu, and the average size of each farm is 2 hectares. Typically one farmer will come up with perhaps 5-10 bags of really top notch coffee in a season...some much less, some a bit more. Our approach is to create a relationship with the group, and then each year hold a sort of internal competition for inclusion in Flecha Roja, which of course means greater premiums, so there is a real financial incentive to perform well. Throughout harvest we are tasting incoming coffee and evaluating them thoroughly for sensory quality. At the end we create a report that is given to the cooperative so that each farmer can track his/her coffee and see how it did. The best of them make it into the Mark.
So each year, even though the coffee is coming from the same group of farmers, not all of it can qualify for Flecha Roja. As Peter pointed out, we cannot create a recognizable brand around a list of potentially several hundred farmers that can change a bit year-to-year depending on harvest results.

Why is it important to have a recognizable and consistent brand/mark? Well, one reason is just simple logistics--we sell the coffee to many places in wholesale...Whole Foods, high-end restaurants, coffee shops, natural food stores, etc etc. Each of them has to invest in promotional material, signage, labels, internal tracking, and that sort of thing. If the names and identities of the coffees changed every season, this is a lot of work for them to go throw out all the obsolete labels and replace them with the new stuff.
At our own coffee shops or on the web it's not such a big deal--we can change that relatively simply...but that accounts for perhaps 40% or less of our sales.
Another is customer loyalty--people like to identify with something. If the names change all the time there is no continuity, nothing to latch onto.

It's also important to remember that, if you come right down to it, EVERY coffee is a blend. Even within a particular farm you've got various micro-climates, different varietals, different altitudes, different harvest conditions over the three+ months it may take to finish picking. When you buy coffee from Finca Los Delirious, for example (a single-owner farm in Esteli, Nicaragua), you are getting a mix of coffees picked over two months, each of which had slightly different ambient temperatures during fermentation, different amounts of sunlight/cloud cover during drying, different lengths of maturation on the trees, etc. With a 'traditional' purchasing system most of the time buyers are receiving a bulked lot from the estate. So you can say, yes, this is a single farm coffee--but it can vary even bag-to-bag within a single lot (normally 250-275 bags/lot, and depending on the uniformity of the mixing at the dry mill), and what you are actually tasting is a mix of many coffees picked over many weeks, and likely 2 or 3 varietals. What we are trying to do is really deconstruct the harvest, deal with single day or single weeks of picking, and go through the season's coffee with a fine-toothed comb to locate and isolate the very 'best of crop'. Then we make decisions (prior to import, while the coffee is still in parchment form) about how and why to combine individual lots to create the most fantastic coffee possible. It's the same thing wine-makers do, for the most part.

Still, I believe it is vital to give credit to the individuals whose work made the coffee great, and we try very hard to give intimate detail about how the coffee came to be on our website. For most of our coffees, a customer can go online and access the whole backstory, with farmer info and a play-by-play that describes how the coffee was sourced. Each season, from each group, we segregate the very top single-farmer lot of the year and mill it separately, even if it is only 5 bags of coffee. That becomes the Micro-lot, for which we pay an big added premium to recognize the achievement, and that coffee will be sold with the name of the individual farm and farmer.

A coffee like Los Inmortales (from El Salvador) is one where I work with four separate farms, and in that case I import the individual coffees separately and we make decisions about how to combine them once they arrive in the roasting works. Throughout the season, we will offer coffee from the individual farms--so we might do a one-month offering of Finca Malacara, one-month Bosque Lya, one month of El Cerro, and one month of Finca Marina, along with Micro-lots from the individual farms.

Our goal is always to present what we believe to be the 'best' coffee from each country that we are capable of putting together, and will even 'tweak' the coffee throughout the year--little more Malacara, little less Bosque Lya, etc--in order to keep it at it's very peak as the coffees mature and change over time.

Still, there is always more to do. The info on the website is growing by the day--I think we have planned a complete renovation in the coming months to make the info better organized/more easily accessible, and part of the plan includes a shitload of more information to explain each coffee, including picture gallerys, farmer interviews, and things like that. I completely agree with those who crave detail, and aim to provide--if not on the label (which cannot fit everything!) then most certainly on the web and in printed material, and those who want the info can find it. And of course if there is something not clear, the best thing to do is ask...

Realize, however, that (unfortunatley) it is still a small percentage of coffee drinkers (most of them coffeed viewers!) who actually take the time to look at this stuff. The majority are content with a pretty package and a nice name. It's our collective responsibility--Roaster of Quality Unite!--to change this reality and get consumers more engaged.

suerte,

geoff

[Edwin Martinez]

I won't say much at the moment....

yeah, sure.



geoff watts,

i'm sure you love what you do. i hope you never get tired of it, as it is much tiresome work. thank you for your exemplary transparency. funny how the best answer to tough questions is the truth.

With out opening a new discussion defining SINGLE ORIGIN...

I think the question is does a blend that's not LABELED a blend - imply that it's an S.O. and does this devalue other S.O.'s? I would venture to say most S.O.'s are just as much a blend as what you've described (geoff) considering your level of involvement at origin in the creation of your tm blends.

When I find myself misled and confused and I'm searching for info, I then wonder how much more misled is the end consumer.

We have a big responsibility to make acurate info available in order to truly educate the end consumer. It may not be easy, it may take a very long time, it may come with associated liabilities, but it is worth it. This is what not only keeps the bar high, but it keeps the quality bar moving upwards.

geoff, i'm convinced if you wrote a book... "how to build a great coffee company" - most would read it and say... "That's too much work."

press on,

[aaronblanco]

Take Flecha Roja, for example--there are more than 750 farmers who contribute to the cooperative and the mill in Tarrazu, and the average size of each farm is 2 hectares. geoff

couldn't the exact thing be achieved by sticking with "Costa Rica Tarrazu" or am i just too bourgeois to know it? doing so would not dilute the tireless work being done by great companies such as intelligentsia, ccc and others (we owe your trailblazing a great debt of gratitude). it doesn't dilute the hard work of the smallholders. and of course, it doesn't change a single great thing about the coffee.

in edwin's case, i'm fairly sure where the coffee i buy from him came in terms of which micro lots. but i'm not positive, so just the smallest denomination i can accurately portray to the customer...the farm name.

my only thing i'm saying is that there seem to be perfectly genuine ways of expressing the beauty of a country's or regions or coop's or farm's or farm's micro-lot's product using some denomination that is already in place without the need for a potentially confusing additional trademark, simply for the sake of marketing. maybe i'm just too much of a simplist.

thank you, geoff, peter, all of you who have contributed so far to this fascinating thread.

[tonx]

couldn't the exact thing be achieved by sticking with "Costa Rica Tarrazu"

Not really.

It would be a shame to go through the work to develop and assemble what are very often truly unparalleled coffees only to give them the same name as something in Millstone or SBUX's product line. "Tarrazu", "Huehuetenango", "Harrar", "Sidamo" are generic terms when you start to look at the variety and breadth of quality available under those monikers. It would be a disservice to all the hard work to not acknowledge the uniqueness of these programs and the coffees that emerge from them.

[Jaime van Schyndel]

couldn't the exact thing be achieved by sticking with "Costa Rica Tarrazu"

Not really.

It would be a shame to go through the work to develop and assemble what are very often truly unparalleled coffees only to give them the same name as something in Millstone or SBUX's product line. "Tarrazu", "Huehuetenango", "Harrar", "Sidamo" are generic terms when you start to look at the variety and breadth of quality available under those monikers. It would be a disservice to all the hard work to not acknowledge the uniqueness of these programs and the coffees that emerge from them.

Tony,
From a marketing and product differentiation angle, yes, it sounds very nice, but...

I think it appears to be a debate that there is a point about transparency in choosing a name for this type of product that does not describe the effort that is going in but sounds from a laypersons view, like a single farm. I admit I don't know much about this topic but it is an interesting discussion. I also think Eddie has some very legit questions in his post given his unique perspective on the industry.

[tonx]

To trot out the wine analogy, should a vintner refer to his Cabernet as simply "Napa Valley Cab" if the grapes came from multiple small growers rather than a single vinyard? To the layperson every bottle of wine might be presumed to originate from a bucket of footstomped grapes at a vinyard bearing the same name as that on its label but the reality is obviously more complex, rarely deceptive, and ultimately not that difficult to grasp with a small amount of homework.

"Product differentiation" is a good thing - the solution more than problem here. Honest differentiation with transparancy is very good thing and provides opportunities for educating the customer. Clearly, even inside our industry, there is a lot of education still to be done to paint a clear picture of the landscape.

One thing that might help you to differentiate marks that refer to individual farms is to look for words like "finca" in the mark. Names like "Finca Vista Hermosa", "Finca Mauritania" clearly refer to farms.

Given the vast quantity of information Intelli provides about our diverse I-Marks, from the labels on the bags to the reports on our website, I'll presume you aren't insinuating we're engaged in deceptive marketing. Certainly we want our customers to know as much as they are willing to absorb about our coffees and about our sourcing methods of which we are duly proud. There is a story behind each of the I-Marks and it is one we are eager to tell.

It is a compelling and romantic notion to place a premium on estate grown coffees over the combined efforts of smallholder growers who feed into shared mills (to juxtapose two of myriad examples), but from a quality perspective these smaller growers are just as capable of producing dynamite beans and should be granted similar market access and reward. Working with growers, separating lots, rewarding quality with higher pricing - all comes into play regardless if you are dealing with one farm with a self-contained milling operation or a cooperative. It might be easier to sell a pastoral of farm life that jibes with the caricatures of our childhood, but there is nothing inherently better or more sustainable about one model versus the other. It just makes for a simpler marketing trope.

[Jimmy Oneschuk]

A question this raises for me, is why even blend the coffees which form Inmortales together? They are described touted as being the best from 150 different farms, so why not keep those farmer's work separate (if logistically possible!) and market them as limited edition runs, and when they sell out, they sell out? From what I understand, relative scarcity in microlot coffee is a good thing for the farmer. Limiting the supply (so long as it cups high) helps fetch a better price, does it not?

But I agree with Tonx, labelling with subregion names like Tarrazu doesn't come close to capturing the nuanced relationship Intelly has with these growers. Tarrazu is a commodity, Tarrazu is a coffee even to connoisseurs that comes from the port city green brokers. The process Intelly uses for getting their coffees is different, and therefore it deserves a different label to indicate such. This is a great thing.

(And thank you for the varietal details!)

[Alistair Durie]

A question this raises for me, is why even blend the coffees which form Inmortales together? They are described touted as being the best from 150 different farms, so why not keep those farmer's work separate (if logistically possible!) and market them as limited edition runs, and when they sell out, they sell out? From what I understand, relative scarcity in microlot coffee is a good thing for the farmer. Limiting the supply (so long as it cups high) helps fetch a better price, does it not?

Intelligentsia do so much of this, its hard to keep up.

[barry]

so why not keep those farmer's work separate (if logistically possible!) and market them as limited edition runs, and when they sell out, they sell out?

because shopping for costa rica @ intelly then becomes a crap shoot. for as much as consumers want something special, they also want to be able to get it next time, and the time after that and the time after that. if all intelly sold were limited runs, then it would be hard to develop loyalty beyond the handful of adventurous customers.


fwiw, bill mcalpin at la minita has been selling "branded" blends of costa rican for years and years. for about a decade we sold "la magnolia" and no one that i talked to ever thought it was from the la magnolia farm. we also carried "la lapa" as a base for flavors. other brands were "el indio" and "el conquistador". each brand was a blend of coffee from smaller farms that went through one mill (i think it was even a volcafe mill), and the beans were blended based on origin, size, and cup quality. one great feature was the coffee was relatively consistent from year to year and usually very good. it might not have been the absolute best of costa rican coffee, but it was certainly an excellent coffee upon which to build a solid base of costa rican drinking customers.

[Jimmy Oneschuk]

So then, reliability/dependability would be the means to business volume and thereby fetch a better price for farmers? I understand having an ensured market year after year is often more important to farmers than getting a high price one year, with no insurance of fetching the same price the next. Or does the blended origin allow more farmers to market more coffee under this banner than would be possible otherwise? While to some of us, it would seem a bad thing to blend, I wonder if there are hidden benefits for the farmers in these programs we don't see?

I don't think any of the coffees at Intelly are a crapshoot, nor would I ever expect this from them. Intelly does have a good trust relationship that ought to allow them to market coffees from very many farms. Of course the dynamics of marketing like this becomes trickier, such as the risk of overwhelming customers with choices, etc.

Can anyone from Intelly comment on how well those individual coffees like Bobollon fare compared to their blended cousins?

Cheers,
Jimmy

[aaronblanco]

To trot out the wine analogy, should a vintner refer to his Cabernet as simply "Napa Valley Cab" if the grapes came from multiple small growers rather than a single vinyard?

no, not the point. the analogy breaks down too quickly to be helpful because a vintner generally has way, way more control of the entire process from seeds to bottle than the overwhelming majority of coffee growers do. for the vast majority of growers their identification stops at the dry mill.

my point is that a conscientious roaster retailer should label the coffee as close to the individual farm as is known/possible/realistic. for many that would be all the smallholders, say, in tarrazu. (just because a giant chain uses that geographic name doesn't make it a bad word...and we should recognize that to some, intelligentsia could be considered a "chain.") maybe it's the name of their coop. is it too cumbersome/loathsome to call your coffee something like (as a made up name example), "costa rica tarrazu, perro grande coop?" perhaps there are forty smallholders who are part of that coop. even though you may not use all forty's crop in your coffee, if you're using a majority of those coffees you're not being shady to use that coop name; it's simply the smallest denomination you can logically and transparently use and still be more detailed than, "cheese from holland."

all that to say, my point is not for genericization. quite the opposite. it is for giving props down to the smallest possible level in an effort to celebrate their work and to be as transparent as possible as opposed to making up a fabricated name just for the sake of marketing. i remain unconvinced at this juncture that an i-mark or roaster's mark, et al, helps achieve either of those goals; has, in fact, potentially the opposite effect of creating a needlessly false perception among consumers by creating a fictitious name to represent real people.

AARON IS NOT TELLING PEOPLE HOW TO MARKET THEIR COFFEE! this is genuinely all meant in the spirit of gaining understanding and gentlemanly debate.

again, a fabulous discussion, everyone. keep 'em rolling in.

[aaronblanco]

i guess another angle is considering the smallholders themselves. i'd sure like to have the name of my seven hectares on some american company's coffee bag. but for sure i would be mystified to know that all my hard work is being represented by some fictitious name that somebody thinks sounds better than my real name.

even if you pay me lots of money, i'd still prefer you (at least try to) call me by my own name. it seems to me to help make this concept of direct trade, well, more direct.

[Peter G]

As we march on in this discussion, let's remember a few things:

1. All coffees are "blends". Every co-op, farm, division of farm, individual tree, even BEAN might taste different from its neighbors. Every pound of coffee, every shot ground into the portafilter, is a blend of some number of discrete units of coffee, which COULD be traced back to a home on a plant somewhere. We've never been able to create a common definition of "single origin": Edwin uses the term as if it is meaningful, but in fact it means different things to different companies. For many, "single origin" means "from a single country". If this is so, then how do I distinguish between coffees from a given country? And so, the race for specificity begins. Part of the joy of coffee is learning about geographies and complexities of the coffee trade, of regions and farms and divisions and screen sizes and mills and co-ops..... but any name we put on a coffee is an arbitrary choice used to represent a bunch of beans we have chosen to lump together for some reason.

2. Our conceptions about coffee "farms" are largely untrue. As Tony so eloquently implied, we've allowed ourselves and our customers to build a romantic notion of a coffee farm, that corresponds with our romantic notion of a vineyard or olive grove or something. Fact is, about 80% of the coffee in the world (and a huge proportion of the best coffees) are grown by the smallest producers, on plots which vary from the Latin American "finca" of a few shaded acres, to the backyard "garden" coffees of Ethiopia, to the hundred or so coffee trees a Rwandan farmer may have next to his corn and potatoes. Many of these "farms" don't have names. Oftentimes, these producers are unafilliated with a co-op.

3. "geographic" names are often misleading Did you know that "Mandheling" is meaningless when applied to Sumatran coffees? Pluma, Tarrazu, Antigua, Villa Rica, (I could go on and on) are controversial "regions" that mean different things to different folks. I once saw Colombian "Armenia" coffee in a mill hundreds of miles away from that city.

4. "brand" names are useful indicators of quality. Brands are common in coffee, and mill marks, farm names, roaster marks, geographic indicator names, are all examples of branding. The owner of the brand controls the quality-meaning of that brand up to the point that he loses control of the product. If there is no "owner" of the brand, or if the brand represents a broad spectrum of quality, the meaning becomes less and less significant.

Now then: I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that as paradigm-busting new wave coffee roasters we should up the ante on transparency in coffee. For the first time in history, cutting-edge roasters are offering their customers very specific information on their coffees. Intelligentsia and Counter Culture (pardon the own-horn-tooting) have been among the leaders in bringing real specificity and authenticity to the coffee trade. I grew up in a coffee industry where obfuscation was the norm, and it usually was to the detriment of the farmers and the consumers. Feh. We needed to change it, and bring some reality to the table.

Personally, I began by eliminating meaningless and misleading names from our coffees (Supremo, AA, Mandheling), and introducing real names of farms and Co-ops (Finca Mauritania, Coop. La Trinidad, etc). But, in the process of doing the work of super-quality and marketing those spectacular coffees to the public, we encountered some obstacles.

Obstacle 1: multiple origins- How do you deal with buying coffee from numerous individual farms and co-ops, in order to create what you (as the buyer) think of as the ideal coffee from that region, as a tribute to that region? If you combine coffees from various farms (or co-ops, or parts of farms, or producers), do you dutifully make the coffee name a tiresome list of the contributing farmers? Or, do you and the farmers you work with create a compelling and marketable name for the project, as a tribute to the region and the farmers, still listing all the farmers who participate? (This is what La Golondrina is, and what the I-Marks like Flor Azul do)

Obstacle 2: Unpronouceable, unmarketable Co-op names: One of the weird truisms of coffee is that coffee farmer co-ops tend to choose official-sounding acronyms as their names. These can be very weird. I work with the AFAORCA group in Costa Rica, and knew that there was no way I could market "Costa Rica Tarrazu AFAORCA" to my customers. I therefore met with the leadership of the co-op, and we decided to call the coffee "Cerro del Fuego" after a nearby mountain. Is this a roaster mark or another name for the co-op? Is this misleading??

And so, to speak to some of the points that have been made:

Aaron said:

my point is that a conscientious roaster retailer should label the coffee as close to the individual farm as is known/possible/realistic. for many that would be all the smallholders, say, in tarrazu. (just because a giant chain uses that geographic name doesn't make it a bad word...and we should recognize that to some, intelligentsia could be considered a "chain.") maybe it's the name of their coop. is it too cumbersome/loathsome to call your coffee something like (as a made up name example), "costa rica tarrazu, perro grande coop?" perhaps there are forty smallholders who are part of that coop. even though you may not use all forty's crop in your coffee, if you're using a majority of those coffees you're not being shady to use that coop name; it's simply the smallest denomination you can logically and transparently use and still be more detailed than, "cheese from holland."

You choose to use Intelligentsia's Costa Rica Flecha Roja as your example. On their website, they list the geographic region the coffee is from (Tarrazu), and the co-op they source it from (Coope Dota). Seems to me they are doing EXACTLY what you are saying a conscientious roaster-retailer should do. All the I-Mark coffees I have ever seen list a wealth of information about the coffees, more than I see on the vast majority of coffee retailer's website. What exactly is the objection here? Is it that they have chosen the word "Flecha Roja" to associate with their Costa Rican coffee? Is it that people will mistakenly and naively think that Flecha Roja is a farm? Intelligentsia has proactively and transparently explained the process by which this coffee was sourced; that it came from Coope Dota.

I anticipate your question: why not call it "Costa Rica Tarrazu Dota"? Well, a google search of "Dota Coffee" brings up a variety of coffees, including coffee "toasted" in Costa Rica by the Dota co-op itself for sale over the internet. I, for one, completely understand Intelligentsia's rationale for wanting to mark its own special selection of Costa Rican cofees with the "I-Mark", giving its customers the guarantee of a particular quality and consistency. Intelligentsia is doing this transparently and honestly, and should be applauded as the model of integrity they are.

To be sure, those who use misleading names and fail to provide the transparency SHOULD be challenged. In my view, Millstone's Nicaraguan Mountain Moonlight or Starbucks Guatemala Casi Cielo are nontransparent brand names of coffee. I get that you are identifying what you percieve as a disconnect between the Direct Trade model and the I-Mark, but to me, Intelly pulls it off by including lots of the information on their website.

i guess another angle is considering the smallholders themselves. i'd sure like to have the name of my seven hectares on some american company's coffee bag. but for sure i would be mystified to know that all my hard work is being represented by some fictitious name that somebody thinks sounds better than my real name.

even if you pay me lots of money, i'd still prefer you (at least try to) call me by my own name. it seems to me to help make this concept of direct trade, well, more direct.

I could not agree more. We should definitely call coffees by their real name in order to give credit and thanks to the producers of that coffee. At Counter Culture, we refer to this practice as "Calling the Coffees By Their First Names". We try not to say "I'll have a cup of the El Salvador", but "I'll have a cup of Finca Mauritania" or "I'll have a cup of Aida's coffee". This is an important movement in coffee. I have had the great pleasure of showing farmers a package of coffee with their name on it (as opposed to some generic name) and seen their eyes swell with pride.

Notice, though: few roasters list as many producer's names as Intelligentsia's, between producer-name micro-lots (often carrying the I-mark as well) and Cup of Excellence lots, etc. The other example brought up in this thread (Golondrina) likewise lists all farmers by name.

Aaron, upon rereading your original post, I notice you use Flecha Roja as an example, and refer to the coffee as "singular" and the co-op as "singular". I think you may be assuming that Intelly is simply "rebadging" coffee from that co-op. This isn't the case: Intelligentsia's process includes sifting through lots of coffee from their producer partners, offering premiums to those who produce and preserve quality. In Dota's case, this is a GIANT co-op, which produces all possible qualities of coffee from the frankly mediocre to the very high. It would make no sense for Intelligentsia to sell it simply as "Dota" when other roasters (and perhaps the co-op itself) sell dissimilar coffees under the same name. This process could happen from a single farm, too.

Finally, Aaron, you object to the creation of a "fictitious name to represent real people." Well, co-op names, farm names, etc. are all fictitious names designed to brand the products and/or the people. I think it makes real sense for the roaster to invent a fictitious name to represent the craft of lot selection, skilled buying, roasting etc. to represent the work they do, and to carry that idea to the product itself.

Peter

[Brent]

A question this raises for me, is why even blend the coffees which form Inmortales together? They are described touted as being the best from 150 different farms, so why not keep those farmer's work separate (if logistically possible!) and market them as limited edition runs, and when they sell out, they sell out? From what I understand, relative scarcity in microlot coffee is a good thing for the farmer. Limiting the supply (so long as it cups high) helps fetch a better price, does it not?

When customers are as educated as the wine market, this would work. Until that point I would suggest that the risk of substandard lots hitting the market and being perceived as premium becomes a real risk that will do more damga than harm.

A premium SO "Blend" limits the choices, but maintains an easy availibility and iidentification for the consumer...

Of course, for those that know that argument doesn't wash.

[barry]

I don't think any of the coffees at Intelly are a crapshoot, nor would I ever expect this from them.

you may be misunderstanding my use of "crapshoot". i'm definitely not saying "sometimes good, sometimes bad". from a customer's perspective, if every time i walk through the door at a coffee place and order "costa rican" i get a different costa rican, then that is a crapshoot. as much as many of us thrive on the variety of taste experiences that different coffees offer, we have to recognize that many (most?) of our customers would like some assurance that the coffee they buy this time will give them the same (or reasonably close to the same) taste experience. my experience is that this is especially true of costa rican drinkers, as opposed to, say, harar drinkers.

[Marshall]

I think a roaster's origin or blend trademark is not only justified, but, with some notable exceptions, may be more meaningful to customers than a farm name. A farm's crop varies from lot to lot and from season to season. But, customers who know and trust their roasters will assume they did their buying and blending homework before they put their mark on the bag.

And that, after all, is the real purpose of a trademark: a quality guaranty to consumers.

Marshall

[deCadmus]

Lots of good stuff in this thread! Since quite a lot of what I do is related to marketing the really cool coffees that Lindsey finds, I'd like to chime in with what drives my efforts... and the variables that come into play.

+ 100% honesty. While I want to tell as much as I can about a given coffee (blend), I always have to temper that with the realization that blends change; there's availability, differences in crops year-to-year, lots if impacting factors. So when I can't be 100% transparent about the components of a blend for any of these factors, I try to highlite the predominant player in that blend. Our Heifer Hope Blend, for example, calls out in its notes from origin that the primary player is La Voz, in Guatemala. We don't in any way suggest that this is the *only* place that this coffee is sourced, instead it's a primary source.

We have other coffees, notably our special reserve series, where I can specify with 100% certainty and confidence that the coffee comes from a particular family farm, or from lots from "the eleven harvest days that were judged the peak of the crop". Even then I have to be careful... last year we offered Rwanda Karaba Bourbon, and we're offering it again now. And while the source is the same, I've made a point to note that its a different "vintage" -- 2007 vs. 2006 -- so that folks don't get confused by, say, Kenneth David's coffee review of last year's crop and think it's this year's. That's not to say that last year's review cannot be used to inform or customer of what to expect this year -- but it's not the *same*.

+ The power of names. It's extremely rewarding to be able to put the farmer's name on the bag. We do that when we can. However, that doesn't really help our customer choose which coffee they want to try. So while we call out farm names where we can, we also use place names, or regional names to try to convey that this coffee is "in the style of..." something. While I'm well aware that Tarrazu currenly means many things to different peoples...

There is a story to be told of the tempests that occur when people debate what is, and what is not Tarrazu. The short version is this " Tarrazu can at once be defined by the geo-political border that is Tarrazu county, by the ICAFE designation of what is a Tarrazu finca, and by the micro-climate that exists within a particularly mountainous region of Costa Rica that produces very hard coffee beans with distinctly spicy, aromatic qualities and bell-like brightness. I'm running with the latter of these three definitions, and I'm willing to let ICAFE and the SCAA sort out the rest.
-- me, from an old article on bloggle.com

The simple fact is that if a customer has tried a "Tarrazu coffee" he has an *idea* of what to expect in the cup. Not a ringer for the actual flavor, but enough to be able to choose in their own mind if they'd prefer to order that over, say, a coffee from Antigua, or Panama.

In short, I hope the names we choose (and the marks we employ) both forward the deserved reputation of great growers around the world, *and* help customers choose with understanding what they'd like to drink today.