FINER THINGS
The pleasure of drinking pure coffee
Joanne Simon, WINE magazine
Posted Mon, 21 May 2007

It’s not insi-i-ide; it’s on-n-n … top!” This line from an ’80s television commercial sums up the South African coffee scene for me — until fairly recently, anyway — and it wasn’t even a coffee commercial!

Coffee was instant, and usually not coffee at all but chicory, and if you couldn’t make it taste better with milk, you could always try adding this non-dairy 'creamer'…

Even today, beans and pure ground coffee account for only 6% of the billion rand spent on coffee for home consumption each year. In other words, although there are many more 'coffee' drinkers in this country than wine drinkers, most of us are probably drinking the equivalent of papsak.

Still, things are improving. “Many South African consumers have grown used to the taste [of chicory] over the years,” says Kjell Ruth, MD of Kraft Foods which imports the Jacobs coffee brand. “But this segment is declining as more and more people discover the pleasure of drinking pure coffee.”

With pure soluble coffee the market segment that is growing fastest, however, he notes that the South African consumer still “seems to value convenience”.

There are now premium instant coffees, like Jacobs Krönung, which have been freeze-dried for aroma and taste as well as 'convenience'. Some of us even home-brew 'conveniently' vacuum-packed ground coffee that we (wrongly) store in our freezers for months.

And perhaps most 'convenient' of all is being able to read magazines we won’t even have to pay for over a coffee in the Fego Caffé or Seattle Coffee Company sections of Exclusive Books, or tanking up at the Wild Bean Café on many BP petrol station forecourts.

Starbucks, Coffee Republic, Costa… The big names overseas might not be here (yet?) but as every new super-trendy Vida e Caffé franchise opens up to offer consistently good 100% pure Arabica coffee from Portugal, it’s no wonder South Africans are on a caffeine high as we smugly order our espressos con panna or tall skinny lattes. But a true coffee aficionado would argue that we’re still nowhere near discerning nor demanding enough.

Don't just accept bad coffee

“When was the last time you had a bad coffee?” asks David Donde of Origin Coffee Roasting in Cape Town, South Africa’s first speciality coffee roastery which opened recently in Cape Town. (Quite recently, actually.)

“When was the last time you complained?” (I didn’t…) “In this country, for some reason, bad coffee is still acceptable,” he says. “On a scale of one to 10, I’d say most places serving even premium coffee only rate about a two. Yes, the coffee is great relative to the other coffee you get served. But is it great relative to what can be achieved? No!”

It was when Donde opened a guesthouse in the Overberg town of Greyton and couldn’t buy fresh coffee, that he was forced to start roasting his own. Soon afterwards, Canadian-born guest Joel Singer ordered a cappuccino. “He immediately demanded to know where the coffee came from, as it was the first time after 10 years in South Africa that he’d found the same sort of coffee he’d enjoyed during the Seattle coffee craze.”

The two of them started experimenting — literally filling the restaurant with hundreds of cups of espresso — and two years later they’ve opened one of only 30-odd speciality roasteries in the world. “We’re not a coffee shop,” insists Donde. “We’re a roaster that also happens to serve coffee.”

The house espresso blend contains six single-estate coffees from around the world but Origin currently stocks 22 coffees, and these can be blended in infinite ways to suit each customer’s taste. “You don’t need to be an expert. Simply ask for fullness or mildness or smokiness or sweetness or nuttiness or whatever you like, and we’ll blend it for you.”

Bolivian, Colombian, Indian, Indonesian, Ethiopian… You name it, they’ve probably got it — or there’s a good reason for its absence. “This year Zim coffee is not up to grade, though it was among the best last year. We literally run around the world finding the best single-estate beans, and we buy directly from the farm rather than from some anonymous broker in Europe.”

Donde believes coffee needs to be thought of in the same way as premium wine. “No one ever says the 1998 Shiraz from a top estate must taste exactly like the 1997. If there are different intricacies of flavour from year to year, that suits us fine.”

He suggests that the big Italian brands which dominate the market, like big wine brands, are more concerned with consistency than absolute greatness. “Why is real Italian coffee so good? Because Giorgio around the corner roasts and grinds his own beans. But the world’s imitation of Italian coffee is mass production. I just wish more roasters would start asking themselves whether they should be buying mediocre green beans year after year just for consistency…”

It’s when the beans are roasted that the aromatic oils and flavours are released. “Every coffee has a sweet spot and must be roasted to that point literally at the moment it starts popping, a little like popcorn, for the second time. However, inferior coffee is often roasted for longer to remove undesirable flavours, and coffee destined to be stored for a long time is often deliberately roasted until it has a bitter, smoky taste, because as coffee gets older it loses all flavour except bitterness. As far as I’m concerned, coffee should never be bitter…”

While green beans remain fresh for a very long time, roasted beans start going “woody and hollow” after just two weeks (and that’s if they’re stored properly, in an airtight container). “If you are going to store your beans for a year, by all means put them in the freezer — but they’ll instantly and always taste like three-month-old coffee!”

Ground coffee, meanwhile, should ideally be used within four minutes. “Vacuum-packed ground coffee tastes like three-week-old coffee forever, not fresh coffee! That’s why you won’t find any vacuum bags at Origin — we don’t want our customers to buy any more than a week’s worth.”

Origin also offers barista training to the public and trade. “We will not supply a commercial establishment unless we have trained their staff. Without training their coffee will generally not be undrinkable, but good technique will make it great, and ultimately that’s our aim — to lift South Africa’s game by driving the quality of coffee itself and by making consumers more demanding.”

Taste the difference

There are two types of coffee, namely Arabica and Robusta. The former requires steep mountain slopes, well-drained volcanic soils, heavy rainfall and ample shade.

It is said to have more aroma and flavour than Robusta, which can grow at lower altitudes and is more resistant to disease due to its higher caffeine content. With the right care, however, Robusta can be equally good.

At the risk of over-simplifying things, Central American coffees are generally light-bodied with relatively high acidity (which refers to crispness or tanginess rather than pH level); South American coffees are similar but slightly fuller-bodied; African coffees sometimes take some getting used to because of their exotic fruity or spicy overtones; and Indonesian coffees are full-bodied with low acidity and prized for their long, smooth finish.

Coffee tastings are known as “cuppings” and can be vertical or horizontal. Small bowls are used instead of coffee cups and four basic components are judged — aroma, body, acidity and flavour.

This article first appeared in the the August 2006 issue of WINE magazine.