by Belgik » Wed Jan 09, 2008 1:24 pm
I only today, after ...two... years, read that article. Mind you, I've been slipping, ever so slowly, into the ...quality... coffee world and, at first, what appeared simple is now, complex, much like...wine.
In the wine scene, you have had the European commission meeting for years and then...whomp...they're going to "help" the ailing French, Italian, German wine ...producers (farmers?)... by allotting Umpteenmega Eurobucks for...ripping out thousands of hectares of "lousy" vines. These same people are the ones who will "improve" lousy French, Italian wine by legalizing...woodchips... in an attempt of rendering these European wines “competitive” as against South American, Ozzie and other products.
(Part of the) truth is, that +quality+ French, Italian wine producers have been doing things right all along, yet they are “ailing”. I'm not talking "Château Frickadour" nor "Clos des Clodos" (fictituous names), whose wines might typically sell for over a hundred Euros (or quid..) a bottle. Not them, the Ferraris and the Porsches of wine, but good, decent, quality, traditional, individual +family+ French, Italian...producers, who might sell their wine in the €5.00 to €15.00 range; who might have, over many years, scraped together half a dozen upto 15 hectares of self-owned or leased vineyards. I know some who buy good wine acreage cheap, then rent a bulldozer to clear it of trees, shrubs and rocks, then plant vines and wait upto 5 years before a first crop, (literally) fighting away the boars!
In trouble, they are.
It is not these family entrerprises the European commission is helping. No. They are being told they are not competitive. They should grow, become bigger, more efficient...of course they can never compete. Because they are stubbornly “family tradition” oriented.
But look at, and taste the Chileans in your supermarket! Five to ten bucks a shot! And you will find that most of the consumers of this wine find it far better than rather more expensive French, Italian…supermarket plunk. Proud family wine producers don’t want to sell in supermarkets. The big chains press them out like lemon. What do you then find, mostly, in supermarkets? Bigger enterprises. The ones “Brussels” would help. Pretty average stuff.
What coffee do you find in supermarkets? Right. Pretty average stuff. And even stuff, perhaps slightly better, like Illy, selling at something like 7 Euros per 250 grams.
I only (relatively) recently became interested in coffee. Slowly, isolated, at home. Spent a not inconsiderable amount of money on (sometimes second hand) equipment, most lately, a roaster. The very first two roasts I did, very very recently, seem to indicate that it is with coffee much like with wine: many quality variables, many different kinds of coffee. I’m, only now, starting to realize that there are a number of “quality” factors involved in … growing coffee. Maybe not as much as in wine, but very similar.
Some would have homogenized “cooperatives” fight the “capitalists”. Others talk “fair trade”. Fair enough, I think, for the production of “standard” quality of coffee. You know, the kind of stuff that goes into the Melitta paper filter, the brown water a lot of people recognize as “coffee” (I’ve been there some 57 years of my life!), without knowing there is something else , a wholly different kind of quality product, based on a complex chain of processes…field, yield, farm process, ship, the market, …roast…, …”brew”, each constitutive element of which has a bearing on the overlapping term “quality”.
I now can better understand that, yes, those coffee growers who do an effort (and I can’t even begin to understand the full extent of that term, as I’m quite unfamiliar with the physical processes involved in producing “good” coffee, it took me many years to learn to appreciate the quality factors in growing and making wine…), those growers who work with …passion (such a nice French term!)… they need to be recompensed. Working the land, picking the beans, preparing them for shipment, the marketing necessary to sell their crop…there is no way they could work in a much more general framework of a homogenized “fair trade” principle, established to “unite the poor”. I realize this is close to politics, but I understand the …individualist. This is where I come full circle, back to the individual +family+ French, Italian…German wine growers: same thing, and same “false solutions”!
ECM Giotto maquinas, Macap M5 grinder, reconditioned Zassenhaus manual grinder,
Thor tamper, Britta filtered water, cheap vacuum cleaner, Hottop "basic" roaster, green beans in stock.