#65: To Blend or Not to Blend? Wine Vintages, and Harvest Update.

Which is hard for me to reconcile, because deep down, I still feel more like a wine person than a coffee person. I think because wine came first, it made a longer lasting impression. And the math is also a bit fuzzy, because in 2013 and 2014, I was doing both.

For six months, during June, July, August, September, October, and November, I was working with wineries in Southern California and Northern Mexico, driving across the San Diego Tijuana border every few days to bring yeast and corks and other wine supplies to the wineries of that region. And in the other half of the year, December, January, February, March, April, and May, I was traveling to coffee farms and doing yeast trials.

For two years, I was split right down the middle, dedicating my time traveling to wineries and wet mills. On the outside, all the travel appeared glamorous, but I was so tired from two years of being in harvest mode 100 percent of the time that that period of my life is a little fuzzy. It's only when I look back at pictures that I remember what I was doing at that time. there's one thing that I can remember very clearly that pushed me to make a change. A passport is issued for 10 years.

With several pages at the end for entry and exit visas. But I was traveling so much that I ran out of pages in my brand new passport in two and a half years. And that's exactly how my body felt. I felt like I had condensed ten years of life and travel into a very short time. I was constantly on planes, cars, waking up in hotels or coffee farms. It sounds so cliche and I cringe a little telling you this, but it really happened to me.

One morning, I woke up, and the heavy curtains were drawn, so the room was very dark, and I didn't have a way to visually identify where I was. I was disoriented, and had the distinct feeling of panic. I couldn't remember where I was, or how I got there. I didn't experience a full blown panic attack, I've never had one before. but I had never felt such acute anxiety in a single moment. I sat up in the dark, tried to slow down my breathing. And found a window.

The timber framed windows showed a vast green carpet of trees, and the sound of tropical birds was calming. I am me. I am on a coffee farm. I am in Hinotega, Nicaragua. I am here for a week doing yeast trials at Finca La Bastilla Ecolodge. I am me. So like I said, this period of my life is still a little fuzzy. So I can't remember if it was at the end of 2014 or the beginning of 2015 when I had a talk with my bosses and said I needed a change.

They let me choose which product I wanted to keep working with. I chose coffee. It was then that I phased out my wine responsibilities and began to focus exclusively on coffee. So 2014 was when I started working with coffee fermentations, but I still spent half my year with wineries. 2015 was a transition year. So even if it's not a full 10 year exclusively with coffee, I am getting close to the tipping point where most of my life has been dedicated to coffee rather than wine.

I have trouble identifying as a coffee person. I still feel like a wine person, but time and experience are taking away my claim to that previous identity. I'm not sure why I wanted to share that with you today. I guess I'm grappling with that shift in identity and because I have a podcast, well, seems like a good idea to do it publicly with everybody together. but I think the other reason I might have wanted to share this is to tell you how much I love production work.

Whether it's wine or coffee, I love the transformation of a raw material to a finished product. Grapes rolling into the winery, or coffee cherries arriving at the mill. Being in places of transformation is my happy place. That's why today's episode is my favorite kind. because it's a literal representation of the title of this podcast. I talk a lot of theory and philosophy on this podcast, but today it's about the real life, practical, hands in the clay moments.

Today, I will be updating you on the coffee we made this harvest season. And before I forget, I want to remind you that I have a second podcast called Cabal Café that is completely in Spanish and is much more focused on practical information and advice for coffee producers. The episodes are short and focused on answering producers questions about processing, and the latest episode tackles infusion, co fermentation, and inoculation.

Many producers are seeking clarity about the differences between adding fruit, spices, or yeast to the fermentation tank. Those three different products react differently in the tank, and the episode attempts to give more language and nuance to those differences. If you want to practice your Spanish, or know Spanish speaking coffee professionals who would like this kind of information, please share it with them. The links are in the show notes.

Nick has also updated our website to include a lot more resources in Spanish like translations of articles and videos on the website You'll also see the dates for the next fermentation training camps Kenya in October is sold out but I will be doing a Spanish only camp in December and then an English FTC in January 2025 in Guatemala. Those are the only dates on the calendar so far So if you've been wanting to come, don't wait. Okay. So let's talk about practicality.

I live and work on a coffee farm in Guatemala. As most of you may know, I was born in Guatemala, but I did not grow up here. I grew up in San Francisco and I do not come from any kind of coffee family background. And although Nick and I live on a coffee farm, we did not buy or rent a farm. We are guests at Finca San Miguel Urias and we process coffee as well as host fermentation workshops during the harvest season.

Okay. The farm is quite large and processes several containers of coffee per year. Nick and I work on, quote, small batches, and small is relative because compared to the total volume of the farm, we work with a small percentage. But this year, we worked to produce 77 bags of exportable coffee. Which is a significant amount of coffee. When we lived in Columbia, we made about 40 bags of exportable green. The 2023 harvest, we made about 50.

And this year we stretched ourselves to make 77 so that we could have more coffee to offer. We make this coffee because a friend of mine likes the coffee and has been buying for several years. It all goes to a single client. This harvest, Nick and I wanted to make more and find a buyer in the United States so that we could share a coffee with more people.

I wish I could tell you where this coffee is going to be going, but I But we're still finalizing a lot of the details, so nothing's completely set in stone. But as soon as I can announce it, I promise I'll let you know here on this podcast where this coffee is going and where you'll be able to taste it. So like I said, for the 2024 harvest, we have ended up with 77 bags of finished green exportable coffee. We started with 763 quintales of cherry, or 34, 568 kilograms of cherry.

The first cherry came in December 2nd, and the last batch was processed March 15th. But we didn't get everything off the patio until March 28th. The farm is large, with 50 hectares of planted coffee. There is a wet mill, bodega for storing coffee, as well as a large building that serves as an office and cupping lab. The property also has four houses for employees, but only three are livable at the moment. The fourth currently has no roof and needs to be repaired.

Nick and I live in a recently remodeled employee house. We are a three minute walk from the mill and drying patios. Living on a coffee farm is exactly as awesome as you imagine it. If you like remote country living, which we do because we have seven dogs and one cat. During the harvest, November to April, we spend our days fermenting coffee in the mill and checking on drying in the patios. We process during 13 weeks.

18 different batches or daylots, but that's not how I wanted to make or sell coffee. I want a single batch. The reason for this is mainly because what I teach is consistency on a large scale, and also because of my previous wine training. If you've listened to even one other episode of this podcast, you'll know that I'm usually trying to discourage the coffee industry from blindly adopting wine culture.

Usually, I share my thoughts that adopting a wine model benefits consumers more than producers and further accentuates inequality between the coffee buyer and the coffee producer. Usually, I believe the wine model does more harm than good. But here is a rare occasion where I think coffee could truly benefit from the wine model.

Even if you're not a wine connoisseur, I'm sure many of you have heard wine people talk about vintages, as in, oh yes, that was a good vintage, or oh yes, that's a rare vintage. Even the wine consumers want consistency. They can still appreciate the variations of a vintage. Wine customers appreciate the consistency of a wine brand, but they also allow for variations from year to year. Vintages in wine, meaning each year being different, bring value and interest to wine collectors.

Being able to taste those differences makes a wine buyer want to buy the same wine in different years because they know it can't actually be the same wine since the growing season can be so different. That is why so many people belong to wine clubs. They get the same grapes from the same producer year after year after year. They collect it. Their loyalty is a point of pride.

Specialty coffee has largely adopted the opposite model, where novelty and constantly changing offerings are marks of quality. A very cool cafe is one that has many different coffees from all parts of the world, and the menu is always changing and bringing fresh offerings. So why don't we talk about vintages in coffee like we do in wine? I think in coffee, we have an expectation that our coffee should be more stable.

Or we don't even realize we expect this because we talk about the main variations to be location, variety, or processing. One coffee is different from another because it comes from Kenya versus Ethiopia. Or because it's a caturra versus a bourbon, or because one is washed versus unnatural. We usually identify big sweeping differences, but we rarely talk about the same variety from the same region from the same producer over multiple years.

As consumers, we rarely get to experience that same coffee through the lens of vintage. Many specialty green buyers do have multiple year contracts with the same producers. This is becoming more common to see these long term relationships. But just because they are buying from the same producer, it's not guaranteed they are buying the exact same coffee year after year.

Producers can have different farms, and depending on performance, the farm you bought from last year maybe didn't show as well this year, and so you buy coffee from another farm, but from the same producer. You have a long term relationship. But some continuity of the coffee is lost. Coffee brands most likely create consistency and stability by buying different coffees that taste like other coffees. If they have identified a certain profile, they seek those out to fit the existing model.

From the side of a consumer, we taste consistency. But not because it's the same coffee, but precisely because it's a different coffee. Coffee buyers care about continuity of quality, stability of maintaining an expected profile. But it's interesting that this continuity doesn't come from the coffee itself. It comes from the buying practices. I think in copy we have an expectation that our copy should be more stable, even though there is less reason for the copy to be stable.

In vineyards, we can irrigate when it doesn't rain enough or at the right time. And if it rains too much? Well, you can hire helicopters to fly over and dry out the vines. I know this is an exaggeration, but I definitely have seen this happen before one year when I was working in Napa Valley. And if it's too cold, many vineyards are equipped with heaters to avoid frost damage. And if it's too hot, you can run the sprinklers to try and cool down the plants.

The vineyard is pruned every year, and we have practices like dropping fruit to concentrate the energy of the plant to force it to ripen evenly. There is so much human intervention in vineyards that is not possible in coffee farms. The investment in coffee farms versus vineyards are dramatically different. Most coffee farmers don't have access to the types of interventions that grape growers have. And even with all this intervention, the wines still turn out differently year to year.

And, and, instead of that being a bad thing, it's usually a positive thing. I think because we rarely get to taste the same coffee over multiple years, we forget this vintage component. The effect that the growing season has on the quality of the coffee. In coffee, we are not used to following the same farm year over year to appreciate those differences. And instead, the model is coffee hunters picking and choosing from different coffees to mimic and create that false sense of stability.

Nothing illustrates this more than tasting notes. A winemaker creates the tasting notes for the wine, very similar to the flavor descriptors you will see on coffee bags. For example, in 2019, Opus One had the following tasting notes for their wine. Opus One 2019 has intense aromas of black plum, blueberry, black currant, and dried rose petals, accentuated by mineral undertones. The creamy, satiny texture is framed by fine grained tannins.

The freshness and soft glow of acidity create a subtle tension with dark fruit flavors, savory herbs, espresso, and cocoa. A delicate dark chocolate bitterness lingers on the finish. These tasting notes are important, but in wine, tasting notes are also accompanied by vintage notes. If you look on their webpage, in the largest font with the most prominence on the page, even before you can read the tasting notes, you will find These are the vintage notes for that same wine.

Abundant spring rains, nearly double the annual average, saturated the soil and provided ample water for the growing season. The first signs of bud break were observed in the vineyard on March 27th, a full 15 days later than usual. This delay led to later bloom and veraison. However, warmer temperatures toward the end of the summer accelerated the fruit's development and maturity. Picking began on September 10th, a couple of days earlier than average.

Harvest lasted four weeks and activity in the cellar proceeded at a calm and steady pace. And for those of you that don't know, uh, veraison is when, is the moment that we mark in the vineyard when the green grapes turn color, when we have that changing of pigmentation on the grape skins.

In this opus example, they mention lots of spring rain, nearly double the amount, and this would make you think that there would be a lot of gray days, meaning few sunny days, very cloudy days to account for all that rain. And this makes sense when we are told that bud break was two weeks later than usual, so not enough sun to mature the fruit.

So this delayed fruit maturity would also lead you to think of under ripe flavors that Might have been the case, except warm temperatures in September accelerated fruit development, and perhaps a small heat wave allowed the fruit to develop the intense aromas of black plum, blueberry, and blackcurrant that they mention in the tasting notes.

But they also mention the dried rose petals, savory herbs, and mineral undertones, which I think could be a little lingering greenness from the strong rains and the delayed bud break. When we talk about rain and sunshine and plant development and then the human decisions that were made as to when to harvest, this is the kind of terroir that I could get behind in coffee. But in coffee, we don't usually get the same opportunity. Let's move to how coffee is generally processed.

In daylots, coffee cherries are harvested and come into the mill usually the same day. They're floated and separated and either pulped or ferment or sent as whole cherries to dry. The point is that they're together as a single day lot or single batch or micro lot until it's dried and can be cupped. I get the impression that we think of micro lotts as coffee.

That has been kept apart because it is special, but the reality for many producers is that de lots or micro lots are the standard way to operate. It's easier to keep everything separate. Not because it's special, but because blending is hard. The difficult thing would be to make a large blend and keep it consistent. Not only is it difficult to blend, but it's not what most specialty buyers want.

I'm not talking about mixing everything together like commodity anonymous coffee, where lots of smallholders coffee gets mixed together at the dry mill. I'm talking about a single producer mixing their own daylots. One challenge is just practicality. It's difficult to find a space physically big enough to bled. Another challenge is the coffee medium itself. Coffee is solid. In a liquid, it's possible to know when you've mixed enough and have a homogenous mass.

But when coffee is heterogeneous to begin with, meaning no two seeds are alike, then when do you know that you've mixed enough? So large lots are difficult to work with, but so are small lots because There's a lack of equipment. There's a gap in the market for small medium producers who want to prepare their own coffee for export.

I've talked to several producers who want to stop selling cherry and process their own coffee, or who do process their own coffee, but then rely on a large mill to prepare it for export. When they want to take the next step, they are usually met with a lack of equipment. Everything is either too small, meaning meant for processing samples and not viable for a whole year's harvest, or too oversized and expensive for their small amount of coffee.

As consumers, we like special micro lots of traceable coffee, but equipment companies have not responded to the new needs quickly enough. Like I mentioned, we made 77 bags of coffee. And it's all the same coffee, but we had two buyers with very different schedules. One needed the coffee immediately, and the other needed to wait four months before shipping.

We needed to mill all the coffee, meaning remove the outer parchment layer, but I didn't want to have milled green coffee totally exposed if I knew it was going to sit in a warehouse for four months, or maybe even longer. The goal is to mill right before shipping, not months in advance. So we needed only ten bags milled. This was a challenge because few dry mills are set up to run small volumes. It's not efficient, and until recently, too few people were buying those kinds of volumes.

A lot of times, the equipment is so large that you'll get residue from the coffee that was processed before yours. I have heard many stories of coffees getting mixed inadvertently or on purpose at the dry mill. Both in Colombia and Guatemala, I have heard many feelings of mistrust in this preparation stage. Our industry is behind in having small scale equipment that would allow more producer autonomy over their coffee and provide the industry with more traceability.

We know the majority of the world's coffee farmers are smallholders, and it might make us think that there are a lot of specialized equipment for smallholders, but most are using found items to ferment and dry their coffee. Yes, we have small pulpers, but that's about it. There's a huge gap in the industry for small scale equipment, but it also makes sense that manufacturers are not rushing to fill this gap.

As we talked about in the last episode about the global price of coffee hovering around 2 to 3 per pound, it's not like the majority of smallholders have a lot of capital to invest in new equipment anyway.

The point is that there is not much structural support for producers to keep their small separate until the point of consumption, and also that micro lots and day batches are the norm, that it's not something special or out of the ordinary that we're doing with coffee, but that's mostly the way Coffee is processed and it's because of this expectation to have many different day lots to have lots of different coffees That I was not expecting the surprise responses.

I received when at the end of harvest we sent out samples to potential buyers I think most people were surprised to receive a single sample instead of a large assortment of our day lots You I use a handful of yeast, and I think most people were expecting to receive several samples, perhaps separated out by yeast or variety or fermentation time. But I was not making different yeast batches with different fermentation times. I was not sending out samples by variety. It was all one sample.

I had combined all the Daylots into one master blend. I didn't realize how risky this feels to many people. The challenge is, when a buyer doesn't like the profile, there's nothing else to offer. Conversation over. Some people responded positively, and others were like, Oh, it's good, but what else do you have? As if that was an introduction, an appetizer, and they were ready for the main course. And I was like, um, that's not the appetizer, that's the whole meal.

That's all the coffee that I have. And it's not that every single day lot tasted exactly the same, and therefore there was only one profile to offer. Of course not. We had 13 weeks of weather differences and different varieties coming in. Some days were cold and I kept a fermentation for 60 hours. Others were hot and 36 hours later, the coffee had to come out. There was definitely variation during those 13 weeks.

We know there was variation, not only because the weather and the processing was different during that time, but because we also tasted each lot individually. Yes, it's true, some lots were standouts because some were And what most would do in the situation, I mean, I think the standard model is to keep those separate at all costs, a special micro lot, a special day lot, protect the jewel. But what about the other 60 bags?

I don't want to perpetuate the model of cherry picking select day lots as standouts, to the detriment of the rest of the coffee. So each time, as we were cupping, when a day lot stood out as exceptional, it was immediately destined to be blended. The best lots were not kept separate. They were blended and included in the whole. Now this doesn't mean that everything was always included in perfect proportion.

The way that I approached this coffee blend was 100 percent inspired by how we used to make the blend during my time at Opus One. Every day of harvest, we process multiple batches of grapes. Each of the five traditional Bordeaux varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Verdot, fermented alone in their own tank with different yeast strains suited to bring out the best in that particular variety. Each batch got its own tank.

Some tanks were small 2 ton tanks, and others were 20 ton tanks, and some were even 30 tons. This is because there were not equal amounts of each of the varieties, And because the varieties behave differently according to the climate, some are more resistant and others are more sensitive to heat and frost and drought. So for example, even if there was always 5 acres planted of Petit Verdot, sometimes you would get 3 tons per acre or maybe 5 tons per acre.

Without planting more vines, meaning without changing the footprint of the land, some years you could have twice as much as a year before, or half as much of one variety in the blend. And this also makes the vintage unique. We have a predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon blend, but one year it could be 15 percent Petit Verdot, and another year it could be 5 percent of the blend. All the varieties and day batches were kept separately all season long until they could be tasted as a finished wine.

This meant that depending on how long the harvest took, We could have 50 to 70 different individual wines. For a short harvest, we would have fewer daylots, and a long harvest that's stretched out would obviously have more daylots. But either way, at the end of the season, we needed to make a single opus one blend, something that brought together the best of the season and told a story about the season. I think of it like painting a picture with a particular palette.

Picasso was a prolific painter. He lived a long life and rarely restricted himself in his artistic medium. I imagine a wine vintage, like Picasso's Blue Period. Despite the limited tones, it allowed for some of his most expressive work. Each growing and harvest season has limitations and tones. How many days of sunshine or rain occurred during the growing season? Was there a heat wave? Was there a fire nearby that contaminated the grapes and led to smoke taint?

Was there a new pest that decimated a certain block of the vineyard or lowered the yields and concentrated the fruit? By comparing wine to a masterpiece like Picasso's 1901 self portrait, to a bottle of wine, I may have lost some of you. But I come from a place where we believe wine is not just a beverage, but an expression. The winery that I worked at before Opus 1 is called Cliff Lady Vineyards, and their Cabernet blend is called Poetry.

Because so many of us believe that wine is bottled poetry. But if wine is bottled poetry, it is also true that it involves a lot of math. It was a three month job to make the final Opus 1 blend. For weeks, I would sit in my lab doing math on an Excel sheet to make the many different iterations of the blend. We would have 50 to 60 different components that were available to make a blend. When you have so many options, it's easy to get lost.

So the place we always started every single year was a kitchen sink blend. The expression derives from World War I or II, when households in the United Kingdom gave up everything they had except the kitchen sink to meet the demand for material, especially metal. So to throw the kitchen sink means even the last bit left is gone. We use a phrase, everything but the kitchen sink when discussing a situation that includes just about everything possible.

Our kitchen sink blend was everyday lot from the harvest put together in exactly the proportion that it exists. The tiny lots and the giant ones, everything goes together. My long math days of Excel included creating proportional blends so that the wine making team could try the wine. Before we made the actual full size blend, I needed to make 750 milliliter blend that included every wine we made that year. That 750 mL blend needed to represent 450, 000 liters.

So I would be pipetting 1 mL of this and 10 mL of that that would maybe represent, you know, 500 gallons of a certain wine. Once we could all taste the kitchen sink blend that had everything included, we basically had our starting lump of clay, or our slab of marble. Then our job was like Michelangelo carving away everything that was not David. To reveal the David trapped inside the marble. We didn't evaluate each lot and think about if it was worth being included in the blend.

Instead, we started with everything altogether, and then started taking away components to see how we could improve the blend, slowly refining the profile. The conversations would be like, Hmm. Day lot number 37 has nice raspberry notes, but there's some harsh green kind of stemminess in the finish. What if we removed that lot? And then it would be my job to make the sample and then taste it. And we would again, compare it. What does it taste like without this component?

Compared to the kitchen sink. And then the team would say, maybe, hmm, the wine improved without number 37, but it lost some important body and texture. So instead of completely take it out, let's put half back in and look at what day lot. Number 13, maybe taking that out to see if we can get the blend to be more silky, and on and on. This meant that we would end up with several versions of really good wine, depending on what was omitted.

Then we would taste the four or six candidates for the final blend, and sometimes there were only a one or two percent different from one blend to the other because of what we decided to leave in or take out. Sometimes there were several versions that were good wine, but then we would have to look at how this particular wine fit within the history of Opus One. So then we would taste previous vintages to see how this new vintage fit into that narrative.

Did it make sense considering all that came before? Did it taste like Opus? But also did it taste like what happened that harvest? Did the wine taste like the year 2012 or 2019? It's like when your favorite band puts out a new album. Yes, it's brand new music you've never heard before, but it also usually sounds like them. The familiar voice, the familiar point of view. That is what winemakers have. The ability to share a point of view.

And that is what I believe our modern, current way of buying coffee denies producers. Their point of view. Blending is bad when we are mixing different origins or different producers coffee to make anonymous coffee. Often mixing coffees is intended to blend away traceability and individuality. True. Historically, blending has been used to dilute identity or even take it away. This is why the term single origin and specialty coffee have a very close relationship.

But I believe this way of thinking misses the forest for the trees. Single origin, or unblended coffee, became the poster child for quality and traceability, but it lets us avoid the larger problem, which was producer identity. It let us feel like we solved the problem without really addressing who we thought we were helping. for listening. Yes, blending has historically been used to make the producer anonymous, but blending is just a tool. Its effect depends on who is wielding it.

When a producer picks up the blending tool, Then it is power. Blending within a single producer is highlighting identity and individuality. I also think the practice of not mixing, of having discrete daylots and microlots, is what perpetuated and keeps alive the exploitative power and balance of the coffee hunter. If a producer has 30 or 50 daylots, daylots or microlots, from their entire harvest, it's a lot to weed out. It's overwhelming.

And therefore, the coffee hunter is needed to discern which is worthy. The value is less in the producer who grew and made the coffee and more in the one who can find the diamond in the rough with a blend. The power dynamic is flipped. The power is in the vision of the producer in creating a curated selection to offer when producers blend their own day lots based on their taste and preferences and styles, and then offer up a limited selection to the buyer.

Now the coffee can tell a more complete story of the producer's vision. We've treated coffee as special and rare because it's like lightning in a bottle, valued because a million things went right and then someone was there to observe and capture it. We haven't really given enough care or attention to the limited role we give producers in this narrative. It reminds me of the desire for a specialty coffee to express, quote, transparency of the land. Unquote.

Which basically means a producer is successful when they can fade into the background and not interfere with the expression of terroir. Which is condescending and disempowering. The sentiment is that processing should not be perceived. I have even heard, quote, processed, unquote, coffee, as a way to negatively describe coffee with strong flavors. The way a, quote, fermenty, unquote, coffee, um, is a negative way to describe a coffee.

Like maybe a heavy handed anaerobic or carbonic maceration, where the flavor is strong, but perhaps it's not possible to identify the varietal characteristic. The variety could be a geisha or a castillo, and you would never know because you can't find it underneath the taste of the process. I know many purists are against this style. I'm not against it. It's a choice producers have now, and more choices are better.

But I am reacting to the idea that many think that it is the only choice producers have to make an impact, to make a mark, to be part of the conversation. On one hand, a producer can choose to make a fermenty, loud infused coffee and boldly declare their point of view among the coffee's identity. And then on the other hand, they can let the varietal shine through, keep processing clean and minimal, and make a difference. and disappear into the background. With blending, I propose a third way.

It is possible to make, quote, traditional, unquote, clean coffee styles, but the way that you combine the delots can be the producer's signature. It can be the differentiator. Coffee producers can participate in processing in other ways besides processing the coffee in an extreme way that is polarizing. Because consumers attention spans are short, I also want to caution producers that are adopting this style, That I think they are short lived.

I think we will soon get palate fatigue, and many are already wanting a break from the boozy kombucha fruit bombs and asking for coffee that tastes like coffee again. In our Discord live chats, I've heard from several small importers that wanted to offer new and innovative coffees, but were surprised at how quickly they sell out of traditional washed coffees, and that they have so many customers asking for regular coffee.

The thing they thought would sell the most is not the thing that's actually selling the most. I think we took a misguided approach when we thought the way to make coffee more valuable was to add more. We took a more is more approach. But I believe coffee flavors and quality was mostly fine already. The coffee we drink didn't need to change. The system around how we buy coffee was the thing that needed the bigger change.

That is why after a whole 13 week harvest of daylots, I was only offering a single blend as an option. It was true. A few times having a single sample ended the conversation. I see the appeal of being able to offer a whole rainbow to buyers. That is still a valid business model. Our one sample approach is risky, but I am willing to take that risk for the other benefits. Because, honestly, my goal isn't to sell as much coffee as I can to as many as I can. My goal is to start conversations.

By putting day lots as individual colors that buyers get to choose from, it shifts the power slash ability slash responsibility slash role of the point of view to the buyers. They are telling the story they want to tell. And what we, as consumers, miss out on is a story a producer might want to tell about how the season went or what their preference is. And besides, buyers still get to tell their perspective with roasting style and how they present the coffee.

I'm not favoring the disappearance of buyers to make more room for producers. I don't think anyone should be invisible. By making a blend, I'm making a blend. We get to tell the story of the farm, maybe by representing the various varieties, or by focusing on a certain flavor profile. That was my hope for this coffee as I sent out those samples to the various buyers. I wanted to tell the story of this 2024 harvest, the varieties, the different farms, the ripeness levels, and weather patterns.

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