World Coffee Research — tasting the future of coffee
Would you be surprised to hear that the future of coffee is at risk — that your double espresso or flat white could be a thing of the past as climate change persists?
Climate change makes this a very realistic truth, as it’s harder for the current coffee varieties growing today to survive increases in extreme or unstable weather patterns. While work needs to be done to reduce the rising temperature of our atmosphere, we need to act differently now to find new coffee plants that can survive in the climate of today and the future. That’s where World Coffee Research comes in.
In 2012, World Coffee Research, or WCR, a non-profit organisation was set up with the goal to protect the future of coffee. Coffee companies from all across the world invest with WCR to support their goal and Taylors has worked with them in a few different ways since 2015.
First, Taylors works with WCR via a check-off programme, which means for every 1lb of green coffee we buy, 1 cent goes to WCR. These contributions fund their overall research programme and in 2022, we bought 6 million kgs, or 13.3 million lbs. The check-off programme is part of our every day, but alongside this, we are also investing and supporting WCR research projects in three core areas: breeding, trials, and nursery development.
There are different aspects to these research projects. For example, WCR’s trials involve the International Multilocation Variety Trial (IMLVT) in which the organization conducts field observations with in-country support from farmers who are trained to treat and care for existing varieties to better understand their performance in specific regions and climates of the world. Even more, once WCR determines they have a strong contending variety that can serve the diverse array of needs of the coffee market, they conduct taste/quality trials. They prepare and release harvested varieties for cupping by companies — like Taylors — that participate in their work.
Coffee and wine share many similarities
Coffee is actually very similar to wine. Certain regions are known for a high-quality grape variety, a Gamay grape for example, such as Pinot Noir is commonly grown in France, in Beaujolais, Loire Valley — this is the best quality of this type of grape, however, it can be grown in other countries with varying quality outputs. This same concept can be applied to coffee and our coffee buyers, who are often very familiar with the quality associated with coffees grown in different countries and regions, just like a wine Sommelier, but we call them Q Graders in coffee.
Last month, we received a shipment of sample coffee from WCR for our coffee buyers to taste and mark against the SCA score criteria. When tasting, each coffee buyer notes down their feedback and scores privately during the session. Then, the feedback is aggregated and shared with WCR. Once WCR has feedback from all participants, they will arrange a call for further discussion. This process ensures that scoring is as impartial as possible because just like a Sommelier, our coffee buyers will have expectations of taste — if they know that a coffee has been grown in Rwanda compared to that of a Kenyan breed, their unique preferences may affect their opinions — therefore, they have to taste these varieties blindly in order to produce an unbiased score.
The tastings brought about a variety of results, but our Q Graders’ scores stayed close to their scoring despite not sharing results with each other until the end. Tastings like this will continue throughout our partnership with WCR, to support their work in finding new breeds that can survive hotter temperatures, and the feedback will be shared with the in-country representation to improve practices as they continue working on growing the new varieties.
Thoughts from our Q Graders
“It’s always exciting to be part of the future of coffee, and these cuppings get an extra level of attention when they come across our counter. This time around, there was the usual range of qualities, but one or two of the coffees really impressed the team, amongst some of the best we have tasted. I’m looking forward to seeing the results!” Frank Tanner, Coffee Buyer
“There was definitely a wide variety of quality on the table, from the very good to the sub-specialty grade not so good. The appearance of the roasts was also varied & it’ll be great to (hopefully) learn a bit more about the processing, the different coffees that were on the table &, ultimately, the direction of travel for WCR moving forward.” Liam Darville, Coffee Specialist
“There was definitely quite a range across the table from a couple of sub 80 (not specialty grade) coffees which were a bit cereal‑y with a slight Robusta character, through to one 87ish scoring coffee which was really very tasty. Lovely stone fruit flavours and bags of sweetness.” Tim Medley, Green Coffee Technician