What makes a great coffee?

When we talk about food, drinks, and other agricultural products, our metric of goodness is typically based on visceral experience. We can taste it, smell it, and otherwise perceive markers of quality through our five senses. In coffee, quality is also equated with the experimental and the rare—a coffee processed in a new way, or a highly-sought-after varietal, is imbued with value.

But what if we were to shift our understanding of goodness, and what makes it? What if, for instance, we prized a coffee that was sustainably sourced? I don’t just mean that the coffee was sustainably grown: I mean that the coffee, throughout the lifetime of not just the bean itself but the relationships built between buyer and seller, was bought and sold in a way that was fair and equitable to all involved.

Coffee is an incredibly risky plant to harvest. It is highly dependent on the environment, so a late rainfall or unseasonably warm weather can wreak havoc on the flavor of a bean. For most coffee professionals, this isn’t news. But what might be revelatory is thinking about how to redistribute the risk involved in growing coffee across the supply stream.

Much of the risk in growing coffee is assumed by the farmer. If a crop fails or a coffee underperforms, that almost always translates to a farmer getting paid less—or not getting paid at all.

Michelle Stoler works for Shared Source, a green coffee importer, purchaser of parchment coffee, and exporter who works in Portland, Oregon. She thinks a lot about risk, and how it might be shared. In this episode, we explore what it means for more actors within the coffee supply stream to assume risk, and the good that can come from taking that unique burden off farmers.

We also talk about the coffee industry’s obsession with pricing—not just paying farmers more, but its focus on where the money goes. If we pay a farmer a set price for coffee, why do we need to justify that price by pointing to the investment they made in their community? Why isn’t the work put into cultivating the coffee justification enough?

After listening to this episode, I hope you take a moment to set your values, and to probe your own assumptions. What makes a coffee great? As Michelle points out, the default is to fall back on quality—but there are a million other ways to gauge, and reasons to buy, a coffee.

By setting clear values, more roasters and importers can help assume the risk that we almost singlehandedly put on farmers, which is unfair, unjust, and a relic of the colonial roots of coffee’s past.