Tasting Coffee

An Inquiry into Objectivity

Kenneth Liberman

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781438488981
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

Winner of the 2023 Distinguished Book Award presented by the Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis section of the American Sociological Association At once ethnographic and phenomenological, Tasting Coffee investigates the global chain of coffee production "from seed to cup, " stopping at every stage along the way to describe the tasting practices of each stakeholder purveying coffee. The ethnomethodological care of these descriptions derives from an attunement to just how these stakeholders discover and describe the flavors of coffee and how they convert subjective experience into objective knowledge. The methods and protocols of sensory science are also examined and assessed in their lived details, making this study also a contribution to the sociology of science. Based upon a decade of research in fourteen countries, author Kenneth Liberman provides a nonessentialist ontology of coffee, its history, and its production. The world of coffee becomes a microcosm in which many realities of postmodern humanity are exposed and clarified—with the thoughts of Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schutz, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Aron Gurwitsch, and Harold Garfinkel—even as these naturally occurring case studies provide fresh specifications for these thinkers' ideas.

PART I

THE STORY OF COFFEE PURVEYING

“A cup of coffee is filled with ideas.”

—written on the wall of a San Salvadoran café

Chapter 1

A Brief History of Coffee

The US market, concentrated in the hands of a few suppliers, was saturated with poor quality, cheap coffee.

—Jon Thorn (2006, 74)

Except in Ethiopia, coffee is not an ancient beverage. Outside traditional uses in Ethiopia and Yemen, which did not commence with consuming an infusion made from roasted beans, the history of coffee is surprisingly brief, no more than a few centuries. Today, coffee is ubiquitous and has become humanity’s drug of choice. After oil, it is the second largest cash-traded commodity in the world, and some 125 million people depend on the coffee industry for their livelihood (Tucker 2001, 15). There are billions more who depend on coffee to make their day more fruitful.

Coffee Species

The genus Coffea originated in tropical Africa, and it has some 76 species, only two of which (Coffea canephora var. robusta and Coffea arabica) play a major role in brewing the world’s coffees. Coffea canephora var. robusta (“Robusta”) is genetically older than Coffea arabica and, unlike Arabica, it is cross-pollinating, which has given it much greater variety and has made it a hardier species. Robusta can also contain more caffeine than Arabica. Both offer considerable variation of flavors, but the flavor range of Robustas is wider than that of Arabicas. Although Arabicas usually offer more delicate flavors, Manuel Diaz explains, “The genetic complexity of Robusta is far superior to Arabica. It is our ignorance that has kept Robusta so far behind Arabica.” Another variety of Coffea canephora is Coffea canephora var. nganda. Coffea liberica, a spicy and astringent species, was established in Liberia in 1864 and provides only 1% of the world’s commercial coffee, with most of it being grown in the Philippines. Coffea lancifolia grows in Madagascar, Coffea stenophylla grows in Sierra Leone, and Coffea excelso grows in West Africa. In 1983, Coffea charrieriana was discovered in Cameroon (Wechselberger and Hierl 2009, 7), and no doubt more species remain to be discovered.

While only two of Coffea’s 76 species are used for 98% of the world’s brewed coffee, Coffea arabica is the one that most drinkers seek. Just two heirloom cultivars of Coffea arabica, Bourbon and Typica, provide (along with their many hybrids) most people’s morning Joe (Weissman 2008, 40), a situation that Stephanie Alcala (2019) describes as a genetic bottleneck: “Arabica’s historical domestication has resulted in a severe genetic bottleneck, with the majority of Arabica varieties cultivated today for global consumption deriving their genetic composition from Bourbon and/or Typica.” Coffea arabica was first identified by Linnaeus in 1753 (Thorn 2006, 15) and was the result of a single hybridization event between two coffee species, Coffea canephora and Coffea eugenioides, that took place in the highlands of central Africa (Alcala 2019); however, most of Coffea arabica spread worldwide from Yemen rather than from its origin Ethiopia (Scalabrin et al. 2020), and because most of the coffee introduced to the world was procured from Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, Linnaeus named the species “arabica.” Genetically, Coffea arabica is the youngest of the coffee species (a hundred million years), and it is a self-pollinating coffee tree, which limits the genetic resources it can bring to bear to resist the leaf rusts and insect infestations that are increasing with climate change. As a result, agronomists are actively engaged in experimentation with grafts that combine Arabica and Robusta.

The caffeine that Coffea developed to attract pollinators also attracted humans, and the human conveyance of Coffea around the world and back has transformed the face of the earth, even as viewed from space. Bourbon was brought from Yemen to the island of Bourbon (La Réunion) by the French, and French missionaries carried it to many other African and Asian countries and eventually to Brazil in 1860. Bourbon developed out of the cultivar Coffea arabica var. typica that was grown on the island of Réunion. Typica was another cultivar derived from Réunion’s Coffea arabica var. typica.

The story of coffee is astonishing, although some of the historical details are contested, originally by competing lore and later by genetic science. The basics of this incredible story are that some coffee seeds were smuggled to India from Yemen about 1620 by a Muslim pilgrim, Baba Budan, who avoided the Yemeni ban against exporting seeds (already the commercial value of coffee had been recognized) by taping some seeds to his chest. A coffee plant, possibly related to the coffee that Baba Budan brought to Mysore (or possibly another brought by boat, perhaps by the Portuguese) was taken from Malabar, India, to Java by the Dutch in 1699. In 1706, the Dutch brought a single plant to an arboretum in Amsterdam. In 1714, the Dutch gifted a plant to Louis XIV, and this tree was transferred to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and then to the island of Martinique. It is the ancestor of many of the first coffee plants that grew in the French colonies in the Caribbean (Thorn 2006, 9) and in the Americas. There was much drama associated with the transportation of these seedlings by de Clieu and the theft of seeds by others to and about the Americas, but there is no need to repeat these stories here, since other commentators have recounted them at length (e.g., Pendergrast 2010, 15–16).

The Dutch sent their strain of Coffea from Amsterdam to Dutch Guyana in 1719, and to French Guiana in 1722, from where it was taken to Brazil in 1727. Halevy (2011, 65) reports, “The coffee brought to Dutch Guyana was recently discovered to be of a different varietal than the beans brought by de Clieu, establishing two independent sources to what is now the largest coffee growing region in the world.” Today Typica is too susceptible to disease to be planted widely, though most hybrids descend from it. A Typica brought to Haiti/San Domingo from Martinique allowed that island to become where half the world’s commercial coffee was grown in 1788, and this was probably the source of most of the USA’s coffee during its early years. The extraordinary story of the journey of coffee, the ancestor of most of the coffee that the world drinks today, can be communicated by means of this diagram: Yemen → India → Java → Amsterdam → Paris → Martinique → Guyana → Brazil. That is a lot of traveling.

As a live species, coffee displays a dynamic existence, and its varieties have been mixed and matched by nature, by the accidental effects of replanting, and by scientific experimentation. Even the two most commonly used species, Arabica and Robusta, have given rise to a dizzying array of varietals. The well-known Timor Hybrid from East Timor developed as a natural hybrid of Arabica and Robusta. Another of the best-known cultivars, Caturra, is a natural mutation of Bourbon that was discovered in Brazil during the second decade of the 20th century. Catimore was developed in a Brazilian research lab from a hybrid of Caturra and Timorese Arabicas and is presently cultivated widely in Africa and Colombia. Further confusing the situation, the label Catimore refers to a range of hybrids from Caturra, rather than to a distinct varietal, which is to say that coffee agronomists have partly abandoned the coffee taxonomy (science meets industry). Maragogype is a natural mutation of Typica that occurred in 1870 near the city of Maragogipe (Bahia) in Brazil, and it in turn (along with a mutation of Bourbon named after Señor Paca, the El Salvadoran farmer who grew it) contributed to the Salvadoran hybrid of Pacamara, a handsome, large-beaned coffee grown mostly in El Salvador. A popular coffee, “the Pacamara comes in two flavor profiles, one that is more floral and the other more herbal with a hint of green onion” (Halevy 2011, 122). This difference of flavor can confuse consumers. More recently, a Catimor-like hybrid (trademarked by Cenife in Colombia) has been developed to resist leaf rust (la roya) in the Americas.

In addition to these deliberate cultivars, the situation is made ambiguous by other cultivars that develop their own characteristics due to the terroirs where they are cultivated. These include Blue Mountain coffee in Jamaica, Kona coffee in Hawaii, Sumatra coffee in Indonesia, and many others. Here coffee identity and taxonomy are further confused. Sometimes it can be difficult to locate a line that can divide commercially cultivated strains and proper varietals, and further, the situation is always changing.

Complicating matters are identification systems developed around the world for selecting, selling, and purchasing coffees. Based upon the harvested and processed green bean (what is sold) rather than the plant, these systems of coffee identification are idiosyncratic by nature, since—like language itself—each geographic zone develops its own coherency largely independently of the others. The coffee industry requires systematic classification of commercial coffees for clarifying the bases of negotiations, and these classification conventions vary from country to country. To provide an idea of their complexity, here are some of them: Brazil uses Strictly Soft, Soft, Softish, Hard, Rioy, and Rio (Azienda Riunite Caffè 2013, 34). Somehow, in this system “Hard” (duro) came to mean soft, for the reason that the classification refers to the physical property of the bean, which results from the elevation where it was grown, not the flavor, a situation that can create confusion for drinkers and buyers. Santos exporter and taster Marcio Hazan explained to me, “What we call ‘Hard’ is soft in most places. Abroad ‘Hard’ is bad, but here it is somewhat sweet. ‘Hard’ has a nice aftertaste and is not really hard.” This prompted the question, if “Hard” is soft, then what is “Soft”? Hazan explained further, “ ‘Soft’ is a round coffee that involves one’s tongue. You know, agreeable, you don’t feel anything hard.” Hundreds of coffees are receiving such classifications, which are tailored to the specific properties and geography of each country, and if one is a buyer, one will need to learn them all.

Colombia uses Supremo, Excelso, Caracol, Maragogype, and Usual Good Quality for classifying its coffees. Given the idiosyncrasies of local usage, it is necessary to learn what this “usual” can refer to. Costa Rica uses Strictly Hard Bean, Hard Bean, High Grown Atlantic, and Low Grown Atlantic. India uses Plantation A, Plantation B, Plantation C, PB (peaberry), Arabica Cherry (natural) PB, Arabica Cherry (natural) AB, and Arabica Cherry (natural) C. And the Ivory Coast uses Excellent, Extra Prima, Prima, Superior, and Courant (Azienda Riunite Caffè 2013, 49, 65, 61, 97). While it is reasonable that each producer has designed a system that best serves its own production of coffee, it runs against the grain of the standardization that has been the goal of the coffee industry in recent decades.

Given that the meaning of any word is indexical, in that it is always tied to the occasion of its use, some study of these local systems of usage is required, which makes professional coffee people part-time sociologists. In fact, this is one of the pleasures of being a modern coffee purveyor. Learning local systems is most successful when coffee purveyors are able to work alongside each other, importer next to exporter, with the coffees in hand. Only then can the importers seeking to purchase coffees learn the specific references of the terms and the contexts of their application. A set of descriptors will gain objective status by virtue of an intersubjective ratification of their use, side-by-side, in-house. Short of that, the learning curve can become lengthy, using these classifications to purchase coffees and then using what arrives to make one’s comprehension of them more specific. Learning this way can take years.

Some specialty coffee purchasers will mostly ignore these systems in favor of cupping scores, which they better understand and place more faith in. The roaster/taster Enrico Meschini, of Livorno, Italy, argues, “A ‘good cup,’ ‘fine cup,’ ‘NY 2, 3’ means nothing. A ‘74’ means more than that. … When you are trying to describe coffee, the more that you are using words, the less you are objective. A detailed numeration also requires an accompanying better analysis. But a perfect analysis is an impossibility.” Numerical classification systems are necessarily practical objectivities. Methods of classifying coffees that depend less upon the physical properties of the bean or indications of growing locations or elevation, and instead rely upon a precise tasting that is able to produce reliable numerations, will require the extensive resocialization of the growers and exporters from whom importers and first-world roasters order their coffee.

“Normal Coffee”

The preparation of coffee around the world varies widely also, and the customary ways that each country has adapted coffee to its own culinary tradition can make what is a “normal” coffee in one country unrecognizable to another country’s drinkers. According the Trieste taster Franco Schillani, clients are only accustomed to a certain taste, “which they call ‘coffee.’ ” During travels to some 50 countries, I have frequently asked ordinary drinkers, “What kind of coffee do you like?” The replies that I receive often include the words “normal coffee” or “I just like regular coffee.” While the answer employs identical wording, the referent changes considerably. One reply goes, “I like ‘coffee coffee,’ ” so thoroughly do people accept the way that they customarily drink their coffee to be the way that coffee always is, when the essence of “normal coffee” depends upon local, contingent features of national custom.

NORMAL COFFEE IN ETHIOPIA

Not only did coffee originate in Ethiopia, hominins originated there. Between 2,500 and 3,500 varieties of coffee grow wild in Ethiopia (Weissman 2008, 85), which presents a complexity entirely distinct from that of most coffee-producing countries that grow some half-dozen designed cultivars in forests that are monocultures. For most of time that Ethiopians used coffee, they did not drink it, they ate it. The situation parallels that of the cacao cultures of Mayan Central America, who consumed their cacao in sauces, often along with corn, and for millennia did not consume it as a beverage.

The Ethiopians crushed and mixed their coffee with butter or fat and rolled the paste into hard balls (Roden 1994, 58). “According to early European travelers, the Oromo ground the coffee cherry and bean together with animal fat to create long-lasting, calorically dense food balls” (Tucker 2011, 37). Wechselberger and Hierl (2009, 8) tell us that “the pulp and the seeds were crushed. Fat, flour and water were added to make balls that were then fried.” The first people not from Ethiopia or Yemen to use coffee regularly were the Sufis, and it was they who introduced coffee to the Arab world. Wechselberger and Hierl also tell us, “For the Sufis these balls were an effective means of making it through their long dances.” As Arabic people had been used to making tea, which developed in China before the era of drinking coffee, it was probably they who popularized the idea of a beverage made from an infusion of the leaves of the coffee plant. Halevy (2011, 41) describes, “In the early 15^th century Arabs crossed the narrow passage over the Red Sea in their search for a leaf that could replace the tea to which they had grown accustomed,” and it was likely the Sufis who first came up with the idea of pouring water over crushed beans (Wechselberger and Hierl 2009, 8).

The extent to which Ethiopians used the coffee leaves for an infusion is unknown, but for centuries now the Ethiopians have been consuming a drink prepared from the pulverized beans, although their beverage bears little resemblance to any coffee consumed in an Italian coffee bar or an American diner. Commentators differ regarding when the practice of roasting the beans first started. Roden (1994, 13) says that the practice was started “around the thirteenth century,” and Pendergrast (2010, 5) writes, “It probably wasn’t until sometime in the fifteenth century that someone roasted the beans.” But the Ethiopian roasting of beans is nothing like the way beans are roasted in commercially organized Western countries, in that the roasting is done as part of a household ceremony with chants by women who have the primary responsibility for the daily roasting and preparing the beverage in a jibana clay pot, along with lots of cardamom and sometimes cloves, cinnamon, and sugar. Some of the time they only partially roast the beans, which creates a light yellowish, very hard bean that will break many grinders that are not a mortar and pestle. The result is a tasty drink that no Italian, Brazilian, or American would recognize as coffee. Even today most Ethiopians would not think of roasting their beans anywhere but at home. I have the habit of asking the Ethiopians of the diaspora that I meet (at a cash register, in a university, driving a taxi) whether they roast their own coffee at home in their kitchen, and the answer they give me is “Yes, of course.”

NORMAL COFFEE IN TURKEY

One must be careful when speaking of the national culture of Turkey, since the cultural reach of the Turks stretches a quarter of the way around the globe, having controlled the Silk Route for a millennium and having at one time controlled most lands between Hungary and Mongolia and from the Caucasus to the tip of the Saudi peninsula. Their influence regarding coffee in particular was significant; in fact, it may be said that the Turks were the people who made coffee the commodity it is, just as they accomplished for sugar.

Under Salim the Resolute, the Ottoman Empire conquered Syria and Egypt (Thorn 2006, 12) and brought coffee back to Constantinople in 1517, and then to Damascus and Aleppo in the 1530s. While Oromo warriors from southwestern Ethiopia were fighting in western Ethiopia in 1537 and interfering with coffee production, Yemen became the world’s center for coffee (Thorn 2006, 149), and for several centuries its port of Mocha was ground zero for coffee (today Yemen produces less than 30,000 bags). When Salim’s son and successor, Suleiman the Magnificent, occupied Yemen, capturing Aden in 1538, the Turks took control of the coffee trade before the advent of the seafaring capitalism of the Western European colonizing powers. Constantinople’s first coffeehouse opened in 1554, and by 1570 it had 600 coffeehouses (Thorn 2006, 54). “Coffee became the iconic drink of the Ottoman Empire” (Koehler 2017, 101). Keen to protect their monopoly over coffee, the Turks carefully guarded their coffee production in Yemen (Pendergrast 2010, 7) and prohibited the export of seeds that had not been boiled in order to prevent germination.

The Turks were also responsible for the introduction of coffee to Vienna. After defeating the king of Hungary in 1526, Suleiman the Magnificent took his forces to Vienna, where he laid siege to the city. He was unsuccessful, but his defeat was due more to rainfall and snowfall than to the ability of the Viennese soldiers. Taking Vienna remained a goal of the Turks, and a century and half later, in 1683, the Turks laid siege to Vienna for a second time, surrounding it with their camels. This time it looked to be successful; however, the Viennese sent urgent messages for assistance to their fellow Catholics in Poland and France, and the Poles arrived ...