Direct Trade: coffee at its best
Defiant Imagination is back! After a months-long hiatus, due in part to an international sporting event that took place in Vancouver last month. I hope to be able to write here regularly again.
Customers can get their coffee brewed with siphon machines at Café Myriade.
A little bit of self-promotion: my article on Direct Trade was published in The Warehouse. High-end coffee was just beginning to reach the East Coast when I left Montreal, and I find it definitely easier to have access to good coffee in Vancouver. What a blessing! I will always remember the hour I spent with Jean-François Leduc, owner of Montreal’s Caffè in Gamba. “Isn’t this macchiato delicious!” he exclaimed, after force-feeding me the third cup of dark mixture. (I spent the most energetic hours of my life after this.) Indeed it was, and I have since then been accustomed to this creamy and salty taste.
I’m glad North America is discovering quality coffee. These huge cups of tasteless “sock juce,” as we call it in France, served in non-reusable cardboard cups, are nonsense. Coffee should be savoured during a good conversation with a good friend, or while looking at passers-by, or while reading a good book. Coffee gives you the opportunity to sit back, take a break for a few minutes and enjoy your surroundings. So here’s my article:
It’s early in the afternoon and I’m enjoying one of the last warm days of September, sitting on the terrace of Café Myriade. I’m savouring a cup of thick, black Tanzanian coffee that the barista recommended for the brewing technique I selected.
Located in the heart of the new Quartier Concordia in downtown Montreal, Café Myriade’s competitors are numerous. No less than four coffee shop franchises and a few other independent ones can be found in the blocks surrounding Concordia University, in addition to those located inside of the school’s buildings.
Café Myriade is nonetheless packed. Puffy-haired twentysomethings line up at the counter to order their daily latte while a few teachers discuss school politics between two sips of espresso.
Celebrating its first birthday in October, the café owes its success to the high quality of its products. After years of making do with mediocre coffee, Montrealers have finally caught on to a West Coast wave from cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver that has seen coffee enthusiasts become increasingly scrupulous about what goes into their cups.
The trend has led to an emergence of quality shops and online bean retailers like Citizen Bean and Utopia, as well as the popularization of barista competitions. Even Starbucks tried to capitalize on the opportunity by introducing the revolutionary Clover coffee machine in selected stores in an effort to rebrand itself as a quality chain. In Montreal, the lead has been taken by small, local businesses owned by genuine coffee lovers.
“In Montreal there were so many coffee shops, but nowhere to drink good coffee,” explains Caffè in Gamba owner Jean-François Leduc.
This former lawyer, who discovered what espresso is all about during a trip to Rome, opened his Mile-End café two years ago. Leduc greets most of his customers by their name and strikes up conversations with those he does not know. Each beverage is prepared with equal dedication and seemingly effortless gestures, from the single espresso to the latte and its flower-shaped foam. Customers do not necessarily know much about what they are drinking, he says, but they have learned to appreciate good coffee – and to ask for more.
Specialty coffee is often compared to wine because of the knowledge and attention it requires in each step of its production, from growing to roasting to brewing. The intricate process is even recognized internationally through the prestigious Cup of Excellence award and an annual rating program.
“Coffee to me is more difficult than wine,” explains Vince Piccolo, owner of Café Myriade’s main supplier, Vancouver-based 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters. “If you buy a good bottle of wine and bring it home, you can’t really screw it up. With coffee, you can screw it up a hundred ways.”
49th Parallel, like other roasting companies involved in the high-end beans trade, have chosen not to use the Fair Trade certification that has become so popular in the coffee world. Instead, they follow another set of guidelines dubbed ‘direct trade’ by Chicago-based Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea.
Although this decision has been perceived negatively by some, it is motivated by practical reasons. Fair Trade does not differentiate yields according to quality. Farmers receive the same price for a pound of average beans or a pound of exceptional ones, even though the latter are more expensive to produce. They therefore have no financial incentive to invest in the techniques, equipment and knowledge necessary to produce the beans sought by speciality roasters and retailers. Fair Trade, having not seen price increases in years, is not adapted to this high-end market.
“Buying Fair Trade coffee isn’t enough,” explains Leduc, who uses and sells Intelligentsia’s beans. “If it still tastes bad, you’re still not satisfied.”
Direct trade roasters understand the attention required in farming exceptional coffee and travel extensively to meet the farmers themselves, instead of relying on intermediary buyers, in an effort to build long-lasting relationships based on trust and respect. The entire production process, from growing to labelling, is as transparent as possible. As for the buying rate, direct trade can cost roasting companies upwards of 50% more than Fair Trade.
Without a widely-used Direct Trade certification, the guarantee farmers are well-treated is in the cup. “Customers don’t buy coffee because it says Fair Trade or direct trade,” concludes Piccolo; “they buy coffee because it tastes great.”
Direct trade coffee packs usually display a great deal of information out of concern for transparency. This one features the types of beans used in the mix, the names and location of the farms where they were grown, the altitude of cultivation and the date they were roasted.