Coffee brands: Mocha One of the oldest established names in the coffee business is Mocha, a name found to this day in brands like Moca d’Or, where gold hints at excellence. There is also a type of chocolate called mocha that has some coffee in it. Mocha is a port in Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen was the first country where Arabica coffee was brought from Ethiopia between 500 and 1,500. In Ethiopia it was, and is, a wild species, in Yemen it began to be cultivated and Mocha was the port from which the coffee was exported. Yemen was invaded by the Ottoman Empire in 1517, which took control over coffee and banned its export. Dutch traders managed to obtain some plants that they took to a botanical garden in Holland in 1616, India and Sri Lanka in 1660, and Indonesia in 1690. At the beginning of the

The history of Coffee in Germany The history of coffee in Germany dates back to the 17th century. In 1679–80 the first coffee shop in Hamburg was opened by a merchant from England, where coffee had been introduced in 1852, after Holland. A century later coffee had become very popular in Germany and there were coffee shops everywhere. Merchants from England supplied the north of the country, while the south was supplied by traders from Italy. Among the authorities there was discontent because of the large amount of money paid to foreign merchants for coffee, and the true German was raised on beer, not coffee. Initially they tried to stop the coffee business with fines and jail, only the rich could drink it with a special license and buying from the government at exorbitant prices. The poor had to take substitutes made from barley, chicory and other ingredients. Gradually the

The price of specialty coffees & Fairtrade and organic certification In an August 2020 report, an analysis is made of how the double Fairtrade organic certification influences the price of specialty coffees, based on data from the 2016/17 to 2018/19 harvests. The average New York price fell in those 3 seasons from an average of 1.40 to 1.01 USD/lb. Of all the contracts in the 3 cycles, 26% have some certification and 13% of the contracts are FTO certified coffee, which represent 27% of the volume. Only Fairtrade coffee has a set minimum price and FTO has the highest minimum price at 1.90 USD/lb, including premiums. The average FTO certified lot size was 27 thousand pounds, twice the size of non-certified coffees. The unweighted average price for FTO was 2.51 USD/lb versus 3.55 USD/lb for non-certified coffees, but the weighted average FTO price was 2.41 USD/lb versus a weighted average of

April 11, 2022, Jos Algra The guide Since 2018, the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide has been published every year, under the coordination of researchers from Emory University in the United States. It started with 21 producers, cooperatives, exporters, importers and roasters, reporting for the 2016/17 and 2017/18 harvests, 5–6 thousand contracts with more than 70 million pounds (550 thousand bags of 60 kg), 170 million dollars and an average price of 2.34 per season, when the New York price averaged 1.29 USD/lb. Three years later, the number of donors has grown to more than 100, who have reported for the last 3 cycles an average of 19 thousand contracts, 395 million pounds (2.9 million bags) and a value of almost 800 million dollars per harvest. It represents less than 2% of world production, 7% of the Washed Arabica output and there are many specialty coffee buyers missing, including several multinationals, but it

The political economy of the value of third wave coffee Edward Fischer, in an article written in 2017*, tries to develop a theory on the creation of value through the symbolic means of production in international trade, as opposed to the creation of value and accumulation of capital through the material means of production, in the classical theory of Karl Marx. The material means of production generate use value, the symbolic means of production generate exchange value, that is what people are willing to pay for it. Let’s say this is about the political economy of the value of coffee from the third wave, combined with an anthropological approach, which applies to the case of coffee producers in western Guatemala. The data is from field studies conducted between 2011 and 2015. To better understand the creation of value through symbols, in this case aesthetic, we can make a comparison with

The third wave and specialty coffee The third wave is closely associated with specialty coffee, although the latter predates it by 20 years. Specialty coffee is a concept coined by Emma Knutsen in 1974. There is also talk of gourmet coffee, a high-quality coffee that is distinguished from standard coffees treated as commodities. In the 1980s in the United States, a small group of roasters began to experiment with new types of coffee and lighter roasts to bring out more of the nuances in flavours and aromas, which are lost in the dark roast. It became a movement that quickly spread to many countries in Europe, Asia and Oceania. The movement developed fairs such as SCA (formerly the Specialty Coffee Association of America SCAA, founded in 1982, and SCAE, its equal in Europe), where buyers and producers meet and quality competitions are held, such as the Cup of Excellence, and

The ‘waves’ in the coffee industry trends The concept of “waves” was mentioned in the February 16th blog. In the analysis of the coffee market, this concept is widely used to describe changes in trends in the market and coffee consumption. This is important to understand what factors cause changes in consumption and in the coffee market, as well as to know where the next trend is going. But first a brief prehistory. Coffee was introduced from Ethiopia via Yemen to Europe in the 17th century, mostly through coffee shops. Later it became popular and people began to prepare coffee at home. Back then, parchment coffee was imported, the processing plants were in the ports of consuming countries, and the coffee was roasted at home. If you want to know more about how the coffee business came to be in 17th century Amsterdam, read The Coffee Trader by David Liss. In