The International Institute of Coffee Tasters will organize an espresso sensory game during the SCAA Exhibition (Anaheim, CA, USA, April 16-18). The coffee tasters at Caffè Umbria will be partners to the event, hosting the sensory game at their booth. The winners will receive a copy of Espresso Italiano Tasting, the official handbook of the Institute. Carlo Odello, member of the board of the Institute, will be glad to provide visitors with information about the association.

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Do you want to be a member of the staff of Coffee Experience 2010? Two professional espresso machines, 30 coffee grinders, coffee in beans and pods: more than 7,000 coffees to be served in five days.

If you want to join our staff as a barista, please write to carlo.odello@italiantasters.com. Coffee Experience will cover your accomodation in Italy.

Coffee Experience 2010, Verona, Aprile 8-12: the largest coffee tasting event in the world.

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After last year’s lucky first edition, Coffee Experience is back, the largest coffee tasting event in the world. It will be held from the 8th to the 12th of April in Verona,at the Agrifood Club, the salon hosted within Vinitaly, the most important exhibition dedicated to wines and distillates. Even this year it will be possible to taste 35 different coffees available for the over 100,000 visitors that every year come to the exhibition in Verona.

"Last year we reached more than 7,000 tasting cards – says Luigi Odello, president of the Italian Tasters, VeronaFiere’s partner in the event – A precious amount of data that has evidenced industry trends. This year’s second edition will be an further test to verify the public’s tastes and preferences".

"Coffee Experience also represents a showroom of international importance for participating companies – continues Odello – The presence of foreign buyers and operators is in fact strong, strategic presence in a moment in which attention for expresso is growing abroad, and which in some nations has even surpassed traditional preparations".

Coffee Experience benefits the patronage of the Italian Espresso National Institute and of International Institute of Coffee Tasters.

The roasters that would like to participate with one or more products can write to claudia.ferretti@italiantasters.com or call 030 397308.

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do correspondente Antonello Monardo *

Desenvolver as pesquisas para minimizar os efeitos do aquecimento global na cultura do café, esta é uma das prioridades do programa de pesquisa coordenado da Empresa Brasileira para a Pesquisa Agropecuária (Embrapa) e conduzido por instituições que fazem parte do Consorcio Brasileiro para a Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento do Café.

Segundo a pesquisadora da Embrapa Café, Miriam Eira, nos últimos anos foram feitos grandes trabalhos na planta de café, como o desenvolvimento de materiais genéticos em potencial e de café a maturação diferenciada.  Os novos desafios parecem porém, ser a seleção de cultivos resistentes a seca e situações térmicas estremas e o desenvolvimento de técnicas de cultivos em grau de fazer frente as mutações climáticas e ao aquecimento do planeta. Particulares técnicas de irrigação e adensamento e arborização da lavoura serão por isto, estudadas para reduzir a vulnerabilidade climática da planta.

Estudos que envolvem a esfera da biotecnologia, da agroclimatologia e da fisiologia do café trabalham juntos para procurar atenuar os efeitos negativos do aquecimento global para fazer assim que o Brasil continue na liderança, como produtor mundial de café.

Um estudo realizado por especialistas da Embrapa e da Universidade de Campinas (Unicamp) concluiu de fato que o café, milho e soja, são as culturas mais suscetíveis aos efeitos do aquecimento global. Segundo o coordenador técnico da pesquisa, Eduardo Assad, a principal causa da vulnerabilidade do café são de fato o déficit hídrico e o calor intenso que causam o aborto da florada. Porém, ele acredita que a biotecnologia e a genética possam mudar esta situação, tornando as plantas mais tolerantes a estas ameaças. Para os pesquisadores a resposta as mudanças climáticas poderão ser o cruzamento entre cafés da espécie Arábica e Robusta.

Fonte: Ministério da Agricultura

*Antonello Monardo, mora desde 1992 em Brasília è delegado da Câmara Ítalo-Brasileira de Comércio e Indústria. Torrefador de café gourmet e especiais, ganhador da medalha de ouro do International Coffee Tasting 2008. Organiza e ministra cursos para baristas, participa a palestras e eventos em instituições e universidades, divulgando a cultura do café de qualidade.

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He protested three times because his coffee seemed burnt. In reply he was banned for life from the coffee shop. This is Jimmy Craig’s misadventure in the Canadian chain of stores Tim Hortons.

Canadian media reported that Craig had complained because his coffee seemed a burnt brew. At first he talked to the manager, then with the owner. That, under a local law, handed him a letter with which he  warned him not to set foot in the coffee shop again. "This is not the way to treat people", commented seemingly the owner.

(Carlo Odello)

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The competition rules and the application form for the International Coffee Tasting 2010 are now avaiable on the website of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters.

The International Coffee Tasting 2010 is an international competition for single or mixed origin coffee, in beans, powder or single dose forms, for espresso, mocha or filter coffee. It will be held in Italy on October 26-27 and is organised by the International Institute of Coffee Tasters with the cooperation of the Centro Studi Assaggiatori (Italian Tasters).

The International Coffee Tasting proposes:

• to create a competition between coffees from throughout the world in order to emphasize the hedonic quality of the product which comes from particularly gifted areas and which is carefully grown, expertly selected, knowledgeably roasted and then, whenever appropriate, masterfully blended;
• to emphasis quality production by indicating to consumers the best products on the market;
• to stimulate producers to follow a quality path in its most modern definition: i.e. customer satisfaction.

For more information, just visit the website or send an email to info@coffeetasters.org.

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by Carlo Odello *

Consumer Reports, operating in the field of mass consumption product assessment in the United States since 1936, have just tested 37 leading coffee blends on offer on the American market. Their report reads:

None of the 37 caffeinated and decaffeinated varieties tested by Consumer Reports coffee experts earned an Excellent or Very Good rating.

And that would be fair, as we know that the American market is accustomed to all sorts of products, mainly of mediocre quality (mind, the same could be said about us). The following statement is less convincing:

However, java lovers can still find at least a few Good cups of coffee. Starbucks House Blend and Green Mountain Signature Nantucket Blend Medium Roast perked to the top of the 14 caffeinated blends that earned a Good rating from Consumer Reports.

At 26 and 23 cents per cup respectively, both the Starbucks House Blend and Green Mountain Signature Nantucket Blend Medium Roast offer a good combination of taste and price. Both have an earthy, woody taste, but Starbucks was found to be a fairly bitter to very bitter darker roast, while the Green Mountain has green/sharp flavor.

In other words, the findings point out that, despite their earthy and woody aroma, Starbucks and Green Mountain lead the ranking of the tested coffees. Which could make sense, as such blends might at any rate be the less unappealing in the ambit of American coffee for mass consumption. But it is surprising to find out that Consumer Reports’ assessment is however positive. That means that two intolerable faults, such as earthy and woody aromas, are tolerated after all.

Such America is absolutely different from the one influenced by the Third Wave (or is it already Fourth Wave?) and by specialty coffee which, leaving aside some twisted principles, pursue total quality. And by no means equal to those Italians who continue proposing high level products, either exported from fatherland or produced in the States by operators of Italian descent.

Yet if, as we love doing, we compare ourselves to the United States we will realise that mediocrity is promoted by many in our country, too. And that such people, forgive me if I sound a little old fashioned, are active in educating the mass to appreciate faulty and disappointing coffee. This time the States do not rank first.

* Trainer and member of the board of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters

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The International Institute of Coffee Tasters is pleased to announce that an Espresso Italiano Tasting course will be organised in cooperation with FAC S.p.a. – Porcellane ACF. The course will be held in English on the 12th of February 2010 at FAC’s headquarters in Albisola Superiore (Savona, Italy).

To get more information please write to Debora Tallarico (debora.tallarico@acf.it) or to Carlo Odello (carlo.odello@italiantasters.com). For a description of the course, please visit the website.

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by Carlo Odello *

A flash of lightning across the serene sky of the American coffee scene: Starbucks, the giant of the 16,000 cafes scattered between the four corners of the earth, gambles its name.  As Jason Daley’s optimal article for Entrepreneur Magazine reports, this summer the colossus from Seattle opened a new cafe.  However, it was not called Starbucks; instead, they named it, "15th Ave Coffee and Tea," decorated in a completely different style and operated by a completely different mindset than the traditional cafes.

Why would an international chain whose very trademark became its driving force, a shamelessly global business that serialized the cafe concept, suddenly try to play it local?  One simple motive: it needs to return to the community and connect to its territories to make the consumer perceive it in a different way.  It is no longer the great homogenous chain, the coffee empire over which the sun will never set; instead, it is becoming a social place in service of the community.

The good news for Italian baristas: you are ahead of Starbucks. You are already local, you already serve your communities, you are already part of the social fabric; more accurately, you help build it.  Besides, the Seattle colossus admitted it: Italy is a difficult market, with a capillaceous presence, rooted and diffused in its tens of thousands of cafes.  Frankly put: a nightmare for the commercial logic of Starbucks.

The bad news for the Italian baristas: you are behind Starbucks.  Most of you do not do any marketing whatsoever.  The overwhelming majority of your cafes all look the same: even though they are not part of any chain, they are still characterized by that conformity typical of franchises, almost always offering the same banal and homologous products.  And yet, one could do so much more with very little: in addition to paying closer attention to the coffee, which wouldn’t hurt anyone, why not start thinking of ways to make these cafes truly unique?

Dear Italian baristas, take from Starbucks a different way of marketing. You have the advantage of being local, something for which the American giant now aspires. One step further and you will be in the future.

* Trainer and member of the board of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters

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Espresso Italiano Roasting, the new publication from the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, has just been published. It is completely focused on the Italian way of roasting and blending.

Italian espresso stands out as a concrete expression of the elegance typical of “Made in Italy”, products covering the key role of testimonial of our agro-food culture. And this is why science can only resort to all the modern available means to photograph this art, hoping to replicate and innovate it.

And the aim of Espresso Italiano Roasting is all about this, in fact it focuses on collecting and arranging the output of coffee research using appropriate technical terms to promote its diffusion, giving special attention to the current available means in the field of coffee roasting. As a matter of fact, each single chapter and paragraph is soaked in sensory analysis, which is the main tool used at present for selecting green coffee, setting the roasting process and realizing the blends. The countless correlations involving chemistry, technology and sensory results will easily guide the readers, giving them the tools to understand phenomena they have certainly already observed in the past without the necessary competence.

Espresso Italiano Roasting is in fact based on the experience that the author has achieved with the courses held by the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, the thousands of consumer and laboratory tests carried out by the Taster Study Centre and the tens of samples that have undergone sophisticated chemical analysis.

Espresso Italiano Roasting is only available in electronic format (high resolution PDF) and can be ordered on the website of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters. The index and the first chapter are freely downloadable from the same website.

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