“What is a ‘tea blend?’” is a Downton Abbey-inspired mix of almond, vanilla and cream teas accented with rose hips.
Photo: Sasha/Adagio Teas

Post by Lydia Zuraw, The Salt at NPR Food (04/29/13)

Apparently, fan fiction and fan art aren’t the only options for expressing your love of Sherlock, Doctor Who and The Hunger Games. There’s also tea.

If you visit the online tea store of Adagio Teas, you’ll find a collection of “Fandom Blends.” They’re the teas that customers have mixed and named after characters in favorite TV shows, books, movies and comics.

“Eleven,” one of Cara McGee’s blends inspired by the new Doctor Who, is described as “quirky and dark.” Amy Pond — a blend in honor of one of the doctor’s recent time-travelling companions — is a fiery orange, cranberry and rooibos vanilla c. Photo: Cara McGee/Adagio Teas

The company started allowing customers to create their own blends on the website in 2008. But the service really didn’t take off until about a year ago, when comic artist Cara McGee decided to blend some Sherlock teas on a whim. She was initially inspired by a Moriar Tea graphic that played on the name of the detective’s archnemesis, Moriarty.

Two of McGee’s teas inspired by the latest BBC incarnation of Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick.
Photo: Cara McGee/Adagio Teas

These days, Adagio’s site offers more than a thousand user-created “fandom teas” that anyone can purchase. McGee herself has made about 150 blends, and she’s designed her own label art for them. So why express your fandom in teas?

McGee calls “Bilbow Brew” — inspired by The Hobbit – her current favorite fandom blend. It combines Irish breakfast, sweet potato and vanilla green teas, and tastes “kind of like breakfast in the Shire,” she says. “Smaug,” on the other hand, has lapsang souchong, candy cane and ginger teas in it. Photo: Cara McGee/Adagio Teas

“It’s not just something that another person can look at on their screen,” McGee says, “but they can actually order it and have it in their hands. And unlike a shirt or other merchandise, you can really experience it.”

“Sellsword Spirits” was inspired by Bronn from Game of Thrones. Photo: Aun-Juli Riddle/Adagio Teas

ThinkGeek is another company selling geeky beverages (specifically, Star Wars-themed), but the flavors aren’t crowdsourced, and there are only three currently for sale: Star: Vader’s Dark Side Roast Coffee, Dagobah Green Tea and Hoth Cocoa.

Ilya Kreymerman, Adagio’s chief technology officer, says he doesn’t know of other food or beverage companies out there that let the consumer design their own flavor — especially not ones based on TV and book characters. “Tea lends itself well to that,” he says. “Historically, people tended to create their own blends and share them.”

We haven’t come across other crowdsourced fan foods like Adagio’s, but if you have, let us know.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

In an episode of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee called “Larry Eats A Pancake,” Jerry Seinfeld has coffee with Larry David. Photo: YouTube

Listen to the Story on Morning Edition

Post by NPR Staff, The Salt at NPR Food (04/26/13)

According to Jerry Seinfeld’s publicist, the comedian was listening to Coffee Week on Morning Edition and decided he had something to add. So he called up host Steve Inskeep. Here’s what he shared, edited for brevity.

On his new coffee habit

“I just started. All those years on the TV series, whenever we would have a scene in the coffee shop, they would say, ‘What do you want to drink?’ and I would say, ‘I don’t care,’ so they would just give me a cup of black coffee and I would just touch it. I never liked it and I didn’t understand it and I used to do a lot of stuff in my standup set in the ’80s and ’90s about how I don’t ‘get’ coffee. I don’t understand why everyone’s so obsessed with this drink. …

“And then something happened about five years ago. I started touring a lot, and we would have these great big, fun breakfasts in the hotel and [coffee] just seemed to go really well with the French toast — the sugar and the milk — and it just seemed like the perfect French toast companion.”

On coffee meetings

“I got married and I had a family and my entire day was not free for social interaction. And eating is annoying and difficult to arrange, [and it's] hard to choose places. And meeting someone for coffee suddenly seemed like a wonderful, compact, accessible and portable social interaction.

“You don’t even really need a place. But you feel like you’re doing something. That is what coffee is. And that is one of the geniuses of the new coffee culture.”

On coffee as a morning toy

“I don’t know what the top does. I don’t know what the plastic stick does. I don’t even really know what the sleeve does. But I want that little kit because this is my morning toy. And then — and this is gonna sound very naive, I really am very naive in a lot of areas — I didn’t realize that caffeine has quite an effect on you. And that got to be another toy. So it’s this big fun toy.”

On caffeine

“It’s legal. It’s not expensive. And they have a whole world for you with all their little words. It’s just something to do. My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time. This is a great way to do it.”

On coffee rituals

“I do a little thing about the way people shake the sweetener packet. You know, like they’re all excited. I want to get all the granules down to one end. I love all these rituals.”

On the best place for coffee

“I don’t give a damn. That’s the beauty of it. It doesn’t matter. That’s the nearest place. I’ll meet you there. And you know what? Coffee’s all good. It’s all good. As long as it’s fresh, it’s good. And it’s always fresh in New York. … I think we’re a more productive society as a result.”

On which coffee to order

“I like it pretty basic. I’ve just started this espresso thing, but it’s just milk and sugar. That’s it. I don’t want to talk that long to the guy or gal.”

On instant coffee

“I have that at my mother’s in Florida at her condo. When she says, ‘Do you want coffee?’ And she had a — I think it was a Cuban packet — and I started rolling my eyes. ‘Oh my God that’s the coffee you have?’ And she boils the water and opens the packet and puts it in there and you know what? It was pretty good.”

On the secret to really enjoying coffee

“You want the sophistication of the snob without the pretension of the snob. So you want to know what’s going on, but don’t be a fussbudget about it. You know what I mean?

“When you go into Three Guys Coffeeshop on Columbus, don’t complain that it’s not as good as Gimme Coffee or Mudd or one of these places. Appreciate that for what that is. Know the difference, but don’t be a pain in the ass about it.”

On why coffee is so central to our culture

“I think the answer is we all need a little help, and the coffee’s a little help with everything — social, energy, don’t know what to do next, don’t know how to start my day, don’t know how to get through this afternoon, don’t know how to stay alert. We want to do a lot of stuff; we’re not in great shape. We didn’t get a good night’s sleep. We’re a little depressed. Coffee solves all these problems in one delightful little cup.”

On his show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

“I really wove the idea of this little show that I’m doing on the Internet around this concept. I saw it as this swirling social hub of activity that was so handy and useful. That whole description of why it’s great to meet someone for a cup of coffee — the ease, the simplicity, the compactness. And that it also obviously gets people talking. You have coffee and for some reason it makes you talk a lot. And I thought this is an interesting thing to try and capture. So that was my ambition of this little experiment — let me see if I can capture that energy of two people that are already quite voluble — they’re comedians — and then you give them coffee — you caffeinate them, and then maybe that’s a show.

“After a lifetime in formal show business, I kind of had a theory that if you remove the structures of show business — the studio, the makeup, the microphone, the can we get you something to drink, the chair that you’re screwed into — if you remove that, you’ll get a different tone, a different dialogue. I wanted to get the dialogue that when you’re standing on the sidewalk and you’re kicking the curb and you’re with a friend and neither of you really wants to go home and you’re just standing there talking. That conversation, I thought, that’s a ‘talk show’ that I’d like to try and see if I can get that in a bottle.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

The Third Annual Coffee Ride

It’s officially a yearly caffeinated tradition; my friend Pamela Palma and I led our 3rd Annual Coffee Ride through the streets of San Francisco yesterday. Close to 50 other coffee-loving cyclists met us at 10AM at Stanza Coffee Bar, our first stop in the Mission.

Everyone filled up their coffee mugs and fueled up with pastries to jumpstart their 30-mile jaunt around the city. By adding more miles and hill climbs, we had designed a more challenging route for this year’s group — including a scenic mid-ride stop on Twin Peaks.

I’d be visiting all of the spots on our schedule for the first time, so I was really excited about exploring these latest additions to the city’s ever-evolving coffee community. And several folks mentioned that they’d be biking in areas or checking out cafes they hadn’t heard of before; it’s always a pleasure to introduce our fellow cyclists to new destinations as well.

Co-organizer Pamela Palma

Stanza serves up an eclectic selection of coffees from around the world as well as some unique domestic offerings such as Blacksmith Espresso from Quills Coffee in Louisville, KY.

Along with their sidewalk seating and tables in the main cafe, they also have a lovely patio out back for their patrons.

At about 11AM, we headed east towards the Bayview / Hunters Point neighborhood. Tucked away on Yosemite Avenue off of 3rd, Trouble Coffee now has a second outpost in another remote locale. It radiates the same quaint charm and vintage decor as its Outer Sunset predecessor and most of its popular menu items: thick-sliced buttery toast topped with peanut butter, cinnamon or Nutella and and fresh baby coconuts. Giulietta Carrelli, Trouble’s irrepressible owner, was manning her cozy coffee nook solo. She greeted our large, thirsty crowd by solemnly announcing she’d be ‘making no lattes’ as she’d survived a rough mountain bike crash just the night before. “Just drip coffees for all of you — and tons of toast!” she said with a mischievous grin. But as her shop’s motto is, “We serve guts and honor,” she graciously prepared one of her delicious lattes upon request.

Energized with Trouble, it was now Twin Peaks time. We wound our way through the various neighborhoods of Crocker Amazon, Balboa Park, Monterey Heights and St. Francis Wood to reach the top.

After taking in the gorgeous views of San Francisco from the summit of Twin Peaks, we headed west towards the Pacific Ocean. Situated just above the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House, Lands End Lookout Cafe is nestled inside the relatively new visitor center that opened last spring. While the Peerless Coffee they brewed didn’t earn glowing reviews from our finicky group, the sandwiches, soups, salads and warm cookies consumed during our lunch stop received plenty of compliments.

Eager to leave the chilly seaside fog and return to some sunshine, we were luckily welcomed back into the warm weather in the Marina when we arrived at Dynamo Donuts’ cute little kiosk on the eastern edge of Crissy Field.

Unfortunately, by the time our group showed up, they were all out of donuts. So Pamela and I made an executive decision to skip the last two cafes in North Beach — Beacon and Reveille — and get our sugar fix at Stella’s Pastry and Cafe for tiramisu and other Italian delights.

Relaxing in North Beach with cappuccino and an assortment of desserts was a fine way to end our long day of caffeinated adventures. We’ll be back in the East Bay next spring for ride number four!

You can see additional photos from the ride in my Flickr set.

View 3rd Annual Coffee Ride! in a larger map

Many believe that humanity’s caffeine addiction has wrought a lot of good. Photo: istockphoto.com

Post by Eliza Barclay, The Salt at NPR Food (4/26/13)

NPR’s Coffee Week is winding down, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t give some space to caffeine, the most widely used stimulant drug in the world.

As much as we may enjoy the nutty dark roast aromas and the sensations of a warm beverage, coffee is often just a caffeine delivery system for a groggy brain. Approximately 80 percent of caffeine is consumed in the form of coffee, and in the U.S., we average about two cups of coffee per day. That 200 milligrams of caffeine affects our brains, our performance, and maybe even our health.

Many believe that humanity’s caffeine addiction has wrought a lot of benefits. Earlier in the week, historian Mark Pendergrast told us about how coffee (and caffeine) helped Western civilization “sober up” enough to get down to business. And Jerry Seinfeld claimed coffee has made us a more productive society.

But is there any science behind the idea that caffeine, by way of coffee, makes us better workers? And what exactly is caffeine doing to our tired brains?

For some, coffee is simply a a caffeine delivery system for a groggy brain. Photo: Andrew Moor/Flickr

According to Braun, caffeine works by blocking receptors for adenosine, a compound in the brain that makes you feel sleepy. In other words, he writes in the book, consuming caffeine is like “putting a block of wood under one of the brain’s primary brake pedals.”

Of course, there’s a huge amount of variation in how caffeine affects individuals, which depends on genetics, tolerance and other factors. But several small studies have shown that at low doses (between 100 and 250 mg), caffeine improves alertness and mental performance, especially in people who are already tired. Neuroscientists report that it makes us more supportive of each other in social situations. And one study even found that higher caffeine consumption helped reduce the risk of workplace accidents.

“Its indirect action on arousal, mood and concentration contributes in large part to its cognitive enhancing properties,” according to a review article in the Journal of Alzheimers Disease.

As Allison Aubrey reported last month, caffeine also seems to improve short-term memory — if you’re exhausted. But researchers said it didn’t have any beneficial effects on memory among people who are well rested.

As with all drugs, there is such a thing as too much caffeine. According to a 2001 Institute of Medicine report, 600 mg of caffeine (or six cups of coffee) will bring on negative cognitive effects, otherwise known as the jitters, in most people — including Kramer from Seinfeld. And some people are so sensitive to caffeine that one cup will bring on nervousness and irritability, rather than the alertness that most of us feel.

“We also know that caffeine is bad for people with anxiety — for them, it’s likely to hurt productivity,” Braun tells The Salt. “But for people on the more depressive end, caffeine would improve productivity. The effect of the drug really depends on the brain into which it’s being infused.”

Increasingly, medical researchers are worried about about how teens’ overuse of caffeine is keeping them from getting the restorative sleep they need. That goes for some adults, too.

As psychologist Harris Lieberman of the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine told NPR back in 2011, modern life has made us more dependent on the drug. “It’s a combination of driving ourselves and having high expectations of ourselves, but also of society making a lot of demands on us, so they kind of add up to give us insufficient time to sleep.”

Braun has a theory on how to get the most out of caffeine, and it involves taking regular “caffeine holidays” five or six times a year.

“I find it to be most useful when I start at a virgin state, so I taper down slowly,” he says. “I switch from coffee to black tea, and then peppermint tea. So when I get that first cup of java again, it’s such a great feeling.”

Tapering down also reminds him that he can function perfectly well — and sleep better — without caffeine.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Three women in coffee leading the way: Stephanie Backus of Portland Roasting, coffee farmer Miguelina Villatoro of Guatemala, and coffee exporter/processor Loyreth Sosa. Here they discuss coffee prices as they survey beans ready for milling. Photo: David Gilkey/NPR

Listen to the Story on Morning Edition

Post by Alison Aubrey, The Salt at NPR Food (4/25/13)

The inspiration for NPR’s Coffee Week arrived in an email last summer. I had just reported on the growing Third-Wave Movement in Coffee, and the burgeoning interest in coffee cuppings.

Margaret Swallow co-founded the International Women’s Coffee Alliance a decade ago. Photo: David Gilkey/NPR

Its mission (as the video below helps explain) is to help bolster women in coffee-producing countries — in part, by helping them find ways to start their own businesses and bring more resources back to their communities. Stories like that of these four female coffee growers in Africa, whom we profiled last November, represent the vanguard of change and hope in the industry.

Swallow began her career in 1979. Back then, she was marketing the coffee that lots of us grew up with. Fresh out of Harvard Business School, she was hired by Proctor & Gamble as a brand assistant on Folgers Coffee.

If you listen to my story, you’ll hear how she had an aha moment when she traveled to a coffee farm in Africa. The images she encountered of women and children working long hours in poor conditions, amid crushing poverty, stayed with her. She knew she wanted to make a difference.

The IWCA, now in its 10th year, has grown into a powerful networking organization. But there’s still a long way to go. As the International Trade Centre has documented, women on family-owned coffee plants in African countries take on about 70 percent of maintenance and harvesting work. Yet they tend to have little or no control over their farms’ finances, and they typically do not own land or have easy access to credit.

But change is coming.

Increasingly in Central and South America, women are making progress. On Tuesday, we documented the story of Guatemalan farmer Miguelina Villatoro. In Colombia, 47 percent of the National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers‘ members are female. In fact, one-fifth of that country’s farms are owned and operated by women, according to the federation.

So what’s next? One new initiative underway is the creation of a Women’s Harvest brand of coffee. Nancy Moore of the Almana Harvest Fund is collaborating with the Costa Rican chapter of the IWCA. They’re hoping to launch a pilot soon.

Related Story at NPR Food:
• Meet 4 African Women Who Are Changing The Face Of Coffee

Copyright 2013 NPR.

A barista serves coffee at a cafe in Naples, Italy. The Italian city’s long-standing tradition of buying a cup for a less-fortunate stranger is now spreading across Europe. Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Post by Sylvia Poggioli, The Salt at NPR Food, (4/25/13)

Tough economic times and growing poverty in much of Europe are reviving a humble tradition that began some one-hundred years ago in the Italian city of Naples. It’s called caffè sospeso — “suspended coffee”: A customer pays in advance for a person who cannot afford a cup of coffee.

The Neapolitan writer Luciano de Crescenzo used the tradition as the title of one of his books, Caffè sospeso: Saggezza quotidiana in piccoli sorsi (“Suspended coffee: Daily wisdom in small sips”).

“It was a beautiful custom,” he recalls. “When a person who had a break of good luck entered a cafe and ordered a cup of coffee, he didn’t pay just for one, but for two cups, allowing someone less fortunate who entered later to have a cup of coffee for free.”

The barista would keep a log, and when someone popped his head in the doorway of the cafe and asked, “Is there anything suspended?” the barista would nod and serve him a cup of coffee … for free.

It’s an elegant way to show generosity: an act of charity in which donors and recipients never meet each other, the donor doesn’t show off and the recipient doesn’t have to show gratitude.

The writer says the tradition is part of the city’s philosophy of life. “In other words, it was a cup of coffee,” de Crescenzo says, “offered to the rest of humankind.” It was a time, he adds, when there were more customers who were poor than those who were well-off.

It’s fitting that the tradition started in Naples, a city that prides itself on having the best coffee in Italy. And in a country where the first coffeehouse in Europe opened in 1683 (in Venice), that is no small claim.

Before the likes of Gaggia and Cimbali started producing the modern commercial espresso machines, Italians made coffee at home on the stovetop with a coffee maker known as a Napoletana.

Naples and coffee are inseparable, but the caffè sospeso tradition waned as Italy entered the boom years of postwar reconstruction and La Dolce Vita. For decades, the custom was confined mainly to the Christmas season.

Now, it’s made a comeback. Two years ago, with the eurozone crisis already raging, unemployment rising and small businesses closing on a daily basis, more and more Italians could no longer afford the national beverage — an espresso or a cappuccino. (According to the International Coffee Organization, which represents 44 coffee exporting countries, Italian per capita annual consumption of coffee has dropped to 5.6 kilograms, the lowest level in the past six years.)

Then someone remembered the old Neapolitan custom. So several nongovernmental organizations got together and — with the support of Naples Mayor Luigi de Magistris — Dec.10 was formally declared “Suspended Coffee Day.”

The practice is now spreading to other crisis-ravaged parts of Europe.

In Bulgaria, the European Union’s poorest country, where several desperate people have set themselves on fire in recent months, more than 150 cafes have joined an initiative modeled on the Neapolitan “suspended coffee” tradition.

In crisis-wracked Spain, a young man from Barcelona, Gonzalo Sapina, in a few short weeks started a network called Cafes Pendientes (“pending coffees”) and promoted the initiative among numerous coffee shops.

In France, several cafes now carry the logo “cafe en attente” (“waiting coffee”).

And there is even a site that lists establishments that have joined the “suspended coffee” initiative — the countries range from the U.K. and Ireland and Hungary to Australia and Canada.

The prepaid cup of coffee has become a symbol of grass-roots social solidarity at a time of mounting poverty in what, until recently, were affluent Western societies.

But now, back to Naples, where coffee is not a luxury but is considered, more or less, a basic human right.

And the variety is vast: You can order an espresso “ristretto” (“tightened,” i.e., stronger); or an espresso “macchiato” (“stained,” i.e., with a little milk); or an espresso “corretto” (“corrected,” i.e., with a shot of grappa, cognac or sambuca).

There’s only one iron-clad rule: Cappuccino — which takes its name from the white and beige colors of the Capuchin friars’ habits — is exclusively a breakfast beverage, and must never, never be consumed after 11 a.m. (OK, let’s say noon).

Copyright 2013 NPR.

The Cat. Photo: Courtesy of Kazuki Yamamoto

Post by Maria Godoy, The Salt at NPR Food (4/25/13)

Clovers? Hearts? That’s small fries, guys. It’s time you met The Cat:

That 3-D creation is the work of Japanese latte artist Kazuki Yamamoto. The 26-year-old resident of Osaka creates ephemeral works of art in espresso and foam.

Anime Character. Photo: Courtesy of Kazuki Yamamoto

From whimsical monsters crafted from milk froth …

Foam monster. Photo: Courtesy of Kazuki Yamamoto

… to adorable homages to favorite childhood cartoon characters …

The Peanuts cast. Photo: Courtesy of Kazuki Yamamoto

Yamamoto’s art makes you regret the need to consume the canvas.

Yamamoto has made a name for himself on Twitter, where more than 82,000 followers receive daily tweets with images of his latest creations. But he’s hardly the only latte artist to emerge from Japan.

Einstein. Photo: Courtesy of Kohei Matsuno

That caffeinated Einstein, for instance, is the work of Yamamoto’s friend Kohei Matsuno, a 23-year-old originally from Osaka who now works at a café in Tokyo. (He’s on Twitter, too.) Matsuno’s subject matter varies widely — from anime characters to Lady Gaga. He also takes customer requests.

I like to surprise people, Matsuno, who also goes by the name Mattsun, tells The Salt. (NPR’s Yuki Noguchi kindly translated for us.) He says he’s always looking for new images.

Monkey. Photo: Courtesy of Kohei Matsuno

Lately, Matsuno has started recreating famous works of art — like this take on Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” Photo: Courtesy of Kohei Matsuno

A toothpick and spoon are Matsuno’s primary tools in creating such fine details. The milk and foam parts go on first, then he uses toothpicks to add “shading” with espresso. The whole process, he says, takes about three to five minutes. Yes, that means the beverage isn’t always piping hot when it reaches drinkers’ lips, but hey, they say you’ve got to suffer for your art.

Sure, we have latte artists in the U.S., too, but from what Matsuno tells us, it seems to be more common in Japan. So why bother to craft a masterpiece in a mug when it’s just going to disappear down someone’s gullet?

I put the question to noted design philosopher Leonard Koren, who has written about Japanese aesthetics. He pointed me to two Japanese concepts — wabi-sabi and mono-no-aware — both of which hold, in part, that “many things are beautiful precisely because they are short-lived and fragile,” Koren told me via email.

“For example, the Japanese love the cherry blossom metaphor,” he writes. “Because cherry trees blossom for only a week or two every year, when they do blossom, there is the emotional poignancy of knowing that it is only a temporary state of affairs.”

“If you can memorialize cherry blossoms in poetry—which the Japanese do,” says Koren, “why not do the same for latte foam?”

Harry Potter. Photo: Courtesy of Kazuki Yamamoto

It’s not a bad approach to life when you think about it — always seeing the potential for magic in the mundane.

Big hat tip to Rebecca Subbiah, who blogs at Chow and Chatter, for introducing us to these two artists.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

An overseer sits in the shade while workers collect coffee beans on a Brazilian plantation, circa 1750.
Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Listen to the Story on Morning Edition

Post by Lydia Zuraw, The Salt at NPR Food (04/24/13)

Coffee is a powerful beverage. On a personal level, it helps keep us awake and active. On a much broader level, it has helped shape our history and continues to shape our culture.

Coffee plants grow wild in Ethiopia and were probably used by nomadic tribes for thousands of years, but it wasn’t until the 1400s that people figured out they could roast its seeds. “Then it really took off,” historian Mark Pendergrast — author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World — tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep.

By the 1500s, he says, the drink had spread to coffeehouses across the Arab world. Within another 150 years, it took Europe by storm.

“It actually had a major impact on the rise of business,” Pendergrast says. Coffeehouses became a spot not just to enjoy a cup but to exchange ideas.

The insurer Lloyd’s of London was founded hundreds of years ago in one of London’s 2,000 coffeehouses, he notes. Literature, newspapers and even the works of great composers like Bach and Beethoven were also spawned in coffeehouses.

It is often said that after the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when American colonists raided British tea ships and threw crates of tea into the harbor, Americans universally switched over to drinking coffee.

“There’s a lot of truth to the story, I found,” Pendergrast says. He cites a letter John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, in which the Founding Father proclaims his love of tea but says he will have to learn to embrace coffee instead, because drinking tea had become unpatriotic.

For all the upsides coffee has brought the modern world, it also ushered in its fair share of downsides, too. Europeans carried coffee with them as they colonized various parts of the world, and this frequently meant they enslaved people in order to grow it.

“One of the ironies about coffee is it makes people think. It sort of creates egalitarian places — coffeehouses where people can come together — and so the French Revolution and the American Revolution were planned in coffeehouses,” Pendergrast says. “On the other hand, that same coffee that was fueling the French Revolution was also being produced by African slaves who had been taken to San Domingo, which we now know as Haiti.”

In Brazil — where slavery was legal until 1888 — coffee plantations would use slash-and-burn agriculture, tearing down rain forests and planting coffee trees that depleted the nutrients in soil. Once the soil had been sapped, growers would move on to another place.

And then there are history’s many coffee naysayers. In 1511, for example, the governor of Mecca banned coffee because his medical advisers warned it was bad for people’s health. In 1674, women in London were convinced that coffee made their husbands impotent.

And yet, in an age when beer soup was the breakfast of champions, coffee had one undeniable health benefit: “Western civilization sobered up,” Pendergrast says. Coffee, he says, “had a very good impact in many ways on our civilization, even though it was, for a long time, grown by slaves.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Luis Fernando Vasquez has been a coffee farmer in the central valley of Costa Rica his entire life. Photo: Dan Charles/NPR

Listen to the Story on Morning Edition

Post by Dan Charles, The Salt at NPR Food (4/24/13)

What does it take to find guilt-free coffee?

Much of our coffee comes from places where the environment is endangered and workers earn very little — sometimes, just a few dollars for a whole day’s work. Coffee farmers have helped cut down tropical forests, and most of them use pesticides.

It doesn’t take much effort, though, to find bags of coffee with labels that promise social and environmental improvements. Among the best-known are Fairtrade or Rain Forest Alliance Certified.

I went to Costa Rica to find out what those labels mean and how well they deliver on their promises.

I visited, for example, a hillside in the country’s central valley, near the town of San Ramon, where Luis Fernando Vasquez grows coffee.

Vasquez loves showing off his farm, which also produces bananas and honey. He’s lived here his whole life and learned to grow coffee from his father. But in the past few years, he says, he’s changed the way he farms.

Luis Fernando Vasquez’s coffee farm in Costa Rica. Vasquez says farmers have changed their methods in recent years. Where they once would cut down trees, he says, “now we are coming to understand that the tree plays a role” in a healthy coffee plant ecosystem. Photo: Dan Charles/NPR

“Before, a tree used to be an obstacle, and we’d just cut it down,” he says. “Now, we are coming to understand that the tree plays a role, and it can coexist with our commercial coffee plantation.”

Coffee plants that grow in the shade of trees produce fewer beans, but many people say those beans taste better. In addition, trees help reduce soil erosion and provide a home for wildlife.

Vasquez points at the ground, which is covered by a layer of dead, decaying leaves. “We used to pick all that up, bring it to one central point on the farm and then set it on fire,” he says. “But now I know that if I leave it there, it will actually help improve soil fertility.”

There also have been changes that I can’t see: He’s using fewer pesticides and recycling his trash.

Vasquez is enthusiastic about these changes, but they were not originally his idea.

They’re the result of a long chain of decisions reaching all to way back to American consumers contemplating their many coffee options in the local Stop & Shop.

Several people who are part of that chain are also with me here on the farm.

Fair Trade? Rainforest Alliance? What’s In A Coffee Certification
Learn More About the Different Coffee Certifications Below

Gurdian and his colleagues went to Vasquez and persuaded him to change his farming practices.

Why? “I think that the world is changing right now,” says Gurdian.

To be specific, one of ECOM’s big customers is changing. Nespresso, a coffee business owned by Nestle, has decided that it wants most of its coffee to carry a particular label: Rainforest Alliance Certified.

And Rainforest Alliance, the environmental group behind this label, has a whole set of rules for farmers, called the Sustainable Agriculture Standard.

ECOM took on the job of getting farmers onboard. “We said, ‘OK, it’s time to show the producers that sustainability is OK, and that we can offer lots of benefits, not only for them, the producers, but also for their farms,” says Gurdian.

There was also a small financial incentive. Now that Vasquez, the farmer, is Rainforest Alliance Certified, he gets about 15 cents more for each pound of coffee.

The number of farmers like him is growing. According to Rainforest Alliance, 4.5 percent of all coffee produced in 2012 came from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms. That’s a 45 percent increase over 2011.

There are other labels, of course: fair trade; organic; direct trade.

All of these labels promise slightly different things, and every promise involves some compromises.

For instance: Rainforest Alliance runs a relatively strict system, with independent auditors who inspect farms at random. If the auditors find prohibited pesticides, or workers earning less than the minimum wage, that farm can lose its certification. Sometimes, a whole group of neighboring farms also can be decertified.

You may be glad to know that the program has teeth. On the other hand, those rules shut out many of the smallest, poorest farmers.

Emilia Umaña, who also helps farmers get Rainforest Alliance certification, says the rules ask for things that are too expensive for many small farmers to buy — like special showers for workers to use after applying pesticides. “One of the biggest flaws in the system is that they use the same rule book, worldwide, for every type of producer in every company,” she says.

If you’re specifically interested in helping small farmers, maybe you should look for fair trade coffee. Its whole focus is small coffee producers. Traditionally, all fair trade coffee has come from cooperatives of small producers.

Christian Mora is the general manager of AFAORCA, a fair trade coffee cooperative in Costa Rica. Photo: Dan Charles/NPR

Christian Mora is general manager of one of these co-ops, called AFAORCA, in Costa Rica. It has just 24 members.

To get fair trade certification, he says, you have to show a fair trade organization that your cooperative keeps an honest set of books, that it operates democratically, and that it treats workers fairly.

“They come in and interview people who work in the coffee fields, and they make sure that salaries are fair, and that labor rights are respected, according to the law,” he says.

Once certified, the cooperative gets 20 cents extra for every pound of fair trade coffee that it sells. The cooperative then decides how to spend that “social premium.” It could pass the money on to its members, or do something else with it, such as improve a local school.

But there are compromises with fair trade, too. It doesn’t deal with environmental practices on the farms, and some buyers complain that fair trade coffee isn’t always good-quality coffee.

At the moment, in fact, the fair trade movement is going through a bitter split. One group, Fair Trade USA, wants to expand the label so it can include coffee from individual farmers — even big estates.

Mora isn’t happy about this expanded definition of fair trade. “It could be a problem, because the goal of the label gets lost, and it becomes more of a marketing tool for big businesses, and just makes it easier for them to sell their product,” he says.

This tension — between trying to be a real alternative to the mainstream and joining the mainstream — comes up all the time in these certification schemes.

The toughest environmental certification is probably one called Smithsonian Bird Friendly coffee. This coffee is grown organically, with no manufactured fertilizer or pesticides, in fields that also contain 10 different kinds of shade trees. Only a few farmers, though, are willing to grow coffee this way.

Angelina Zuñiga Godinez and Fanny Cordero Mora grow coffee for Coopetarrazu, one of Costa Rica’s largest coffee cooperatives. These bags of coffee are labeled with the towns where they are grow. Photo: Dan Charles/NPR

On the other end of the spectrum, Starbucks runs a really big program called C.A.F.E. Practices (Coffee and Farmer Equity Practices). Like Rainforest Alliance certification, this scheme includes both environmental and social standards, but the Starbucks audits aren’t really tests that a farmer can flunk. They’re more like counseling sessions. If farmers are doing something wrong, Starbucks will tell them how to improve, but it still buys their coffee.

Yet for all their differences and compromises, coffee producers in Costa Rica say these certification systems, collectively, have had a real impact.

Carlos Rivera Chavarria, general manager of one of the country’s largest cooperatives, Coopetarrazu, says certifications all helped farmers to hear what consumers wanted, much more directly than ever before.

These programs allowed his producers to “rediscover quality coffee,” he says.

Coopetarrazu sells coffee under the fair trade label. In addition, some of its farmers are Rainforest Alliance Certified, and the co-op sells a lot of coffee to Starbucks.

Now the co-op is experimenting with “direct trade.” It’s selling small lots of coffee from particular villages to roasters who can pass along the story of that coffee, and that village, to consumers who want to know even more about the sources of their coffee.

What’s In A Certification?

Organic

• Regulates growing methods, prohibiting GMO seeds and synthetic substances
• Forty countries carry organic coffee farms, with the first certified in 1967
• Averages a $0.255/lb increase in market price for coffee producers
• 298 million pounds organic coffee grown in 2010

Fair Trade International

• Seeks to increase welfare for small farmers and communities
• Guarantees a minimum market price plus 10- to 20-cent premium per pound
• Premium is paid to cooperatives to either distribute to farmers or use for community development projects
• 790 million pounds grown in 2010

Rainforest Alliance

• Emphasizes sustainability in social, environmental, economic and ethical areas
• Developed in early 1990s
• Recently gained the support of major buyers including McDonalds and Nespresso
• Expanded from 197 million pounds grown in 2007 to 827 million pounds in 2012

• Promotes biodiversity through the planting of trees for habitat and shade cover
• Requires organic certification and the use of specific trees
• Certification can lead to a 5- to 10-cent premium over organic coffee prices
• One of the smallest certification programs, with approximately 10.4 million pounds of coffee sold in 2011

Starbucks Coffee And Farmer Equity ‘CAFE’

• Verification criteria developed over past 14 years with Conservation International
• Evaluates workers’ rights, benefits, environmental protection and sustainability
• Starbucks aims for 100 percent-certified coffee supply by 2015
• In 2012, 90 percent of supply — approximately 491 million pounds — was from CAFE-verified farms

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Listen to the Story on Morning Edition

Post by Allison Aubrey, The Salt at NPR Food (4/23/13)

When we wanted to know how the growth of the specialty coffee movement is influencing the lives of farmers, we took a trip to the mountainous region of Huehuetenango in Guatemala.

Here, we met farmer Miguelina Villatoro, owner of Finca El Paternal. If you listen to my radio story, you’ll hear how she has salvaged a family farm by maximizing the quality of her beans and entering into a direct trade deal with Portland Roasting.

At a time when the global commodity price of coffee has sunk to about $1.40 a pound, Villatoro is getting $2.50 per pound for her coffee.

And this kind of premium is typical for farmers catering to the specialty market, who compete on quality. The premium she’s getting for her beans allows her to reinvest in the farm and improve conditions for her workers. One recent improvement: She has added water filters to boost the quality of workers’ drinking water. And the workers’ living quarters on the farm now have a stove with a chimney — small luxuries.

The relationship between Villatoro and Portland Roasting began with a dramatic landing by helicopter at her farm nearly 13 years ago. Mark Stell arranged the visit as part of a tour where he scoped out lots of farms. In the end, he was impressed with the quality of her coffee — which had just placed well at a tasting competition called Cup of Excellence.

“The quality is driving this [expansion of the specialty coffee],” says Edward Fischer, director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University. And he says it’s having a positive effect on workers and small producers in Guatemala.

The volume of coffee that Guatemala exports has either dropped a little or stayed level since 2001, he says. “And yet the revenues from coffee have gone up,” says Fischer. This means that coffee producers are “earning more for the coffee they’re exporting.”

If you click on the slideshow above (the images shot by my colleague David Gilkey are beautiful), you’ll see the incredibly labor-intensive process of producing coffee. Who knew that coffee plants produce cherries, not beans? Or that they’ve got to be milled not once, but twice to produce the green coffee that’s ready for roasting?

So, next time you sip on a latte, remember: It’s not just the face of the barista behind those coffee beans.

Mark Stell of Portland Roasting samples coffee from his Guatemalan grower. Photo: David Gilkey/NPR

Knowing all the effort that goes into that cup “makes the whole experience of enjoying the coffee a little better,” says Teasdale.

The specialty coffee movement, often called Third Wave Coffee, is a fast-growing niche within the colossal coffee world.

And increasingly, in this third-wave world, roasters and cafes aren’t just selling us a good cup of coffee. They’re also selling us the story behind it.

Copyright 2013 NPR.