The last post here, “The Myth of Indulgence,” argued that it is virtuous on the part of a buyer to pay more for things that are genuinely, intrinsically better. By doing so, the buyer tells the seller that their extra work is worth something to the coffee drinker (in our case, here) and that, further, the buyer values the thought, time, and extra care that the seller put into the product.
By seeking out things, generally (not just coffee) that are thoughtfully produced, we show the sellers (the entire supply chain) that we not only value them and the role that they play, but that we also value ourselves. We improve our own lives by enjoying better things in it. We might find that, in the case of food (or drink) that we can’t include as many things as we might like (better things cost more, and it all adds up) but that we are happier eating, and drinking, a few of the better things that we can afford.
That leads us to a pretty important question — what makes something good and what makes something even better? In our case: What makes one coffee good and another exceptional? That question has directed us as an industry (that being of Specialty Coffee) since Erna Knutsen coined that term in 1974. Ted Lingle wrote The Cupper’s Handbook in 1986 (that date according to the SCA) and it was expanded upon through four editions and then supplanted by the Coffee Sensory and Cupping Handbook, in 2021, while still preserving much of Lingle’s approach. Most recently, the SCA introduced the Coffee Value Assessment (CVA) system in 2024 to better document the qualities of a particular coffee and from that to assess its value.
Why so much documentation? Why do you need all that just to have a nice cup of coffee?
Well, you don’t, if you just want to have a good cup of coffee. The SCA is not trying to stop you, but they, and all of us as an industry, are always trying to establish an estimate for the relative value of a particular coffee. The process involves extracting all the information you can from the coffee that you are considering in order to establish its comparable value from there. For the SCA & the Specialty Coffee industry in general, that value ends up being its price. For the individual coffee drinker that means assessing the overall experience of a coffee, and involves a lot more than just money; although it finally, if I may, boils down to that. The majority of the folks involved in our collective supply chain make a subsistence living from the stuff. There’s even more folks that just get by, doing entirely other things, but they depend upon a cup of coffee to make that passage just a little easier.
Obviously, I’m talking about two types of coffee, here. One is solid, consistent and and just what we happen to like in a cup of coffee. The other is much more rare and might even be indescribable at some level, but it is especially delicious, nonetheless. The former might be the type you can bottle or can, with sugar or not, and be just what you have come to expect from that particular beverage. The latter, though, is a much more nuanced thing entirely and cannot survive an aseptic canning or bottling line. While the first type of coffee will always fetch a premium price it is the second type that will, for instance, break records at auctions.
Once we evaluate a coffee, we have an idea of its relative value, but we may miss, I’m guessing that we usually do miss, even then, the extra meaning and specific worth a particular coffee might have to some of us, or perhaps just to one of us. A great cup of coffee, much to the frustration of those of us in the business of getting that special item in front of the coffee drinker, is ephemeral and transient; less durable, certainly, than most of the things we enjoy eating and drinking. Much less than a wine, which can be somewhat reliably revisited by opening another bottle of the same vintage. A great cup of coffee cannot be bottled and will always vary a little from roast to roast and brew to brew, no matter how much we correct for the variables (and remembering that attempts to be objective, especially when it comes to things organoleptic, is not possible). It is those coffees, much more fragile, sadly, that are candidates for greatness, perhaps, even, the sublime (but let’s save that for next time).
