Terroir and harvest

Terroir, minus the wine talk

Terroir is everything about a place that ends up in the cup: height, warmth, soil, shade and rain. Altitude you’ve met — cooler air, slower cherries, denser seeds.

How warm the year runs

Arabica is happiest averaging roughly 18–23°C across the year. Much warmer and the fruit races to ripeness, and the beans come out lighter.

Soil and shade

Coffee wants deep, free-draining, slightly acidic soil; volcanic red earth is a classic. Shade trees keep the fruit a few degrees cooler and slow its ripening, so the seed fills longer. India keeps two tiers, pepper vines up the trunks.

A dry spell, then rain

The tree needs a dry, stressful spell, like a deadline: the rain that ends it sets off flowering, and ripe cherries follow roughly seven to eight months later. In India that rain is the “blossom showers”, February–April.

Ripe is a moving target

Near the equator a tree flowers several times a year, so one branch can carry flowers, green cherries and ripe red ones at once. Ripe fruit is at its sweetest; green fruit has to be sorted out later.

Tap the cherry a picker would take today. ripe

• Flower: Next year’s crop is still being set. Fruit follows the rains, roughly seven to eight months after flowering.
• Green cherry: Not yet. Green fruit is sorted out later, and sorting is never perfect.
• Turning: Not yet ripe. One branch ripens unevenly, so pickers call again every eight to ten days.
• Ripe: This one. Ripe fruit is at its sweetest, which is why the best lots are picked by hand, ripe cherry by ripe cherry.

Selective picking vs stripping

Sort each line into the way of picking it describes.

• Selective picking
  • Takes only ripe cherries
  • Returns every eight to ten days
  • Standard for fine arabica
• Strip-picking
  • Takes the whole branch at once
  • Cheaper per kilo
  • Machines do it in places like Brazil

Selective picking returns for ripe fruit only, and costs more. Strip-picking clears the branch in one pass, cheaper per kilo, with more sorting afterwards.

What stripping leaves behind

A farm strips its branches in one pass. What does that leave to do?

Answer: Sort out the unripe fruit. Everything comes off ripe or not, which is cheaper per kilo, and sorting is never perfect.

Every country keeps its own calendar

Rains arrive at different times, so harvests do. Brazil picks roughly May to September; Ethiopia and Kenya mostly from October into the new year; Central America and India from about November. Colombia and Kenya add a smaller mid-year crop.

Whose crop is it?

It is March. Which of these is picking its main crop?

Answer: Guatemala. Central America picks about November to March, Brazil mid-year and Ethiopia from October — which is why a roaster’s menu changes through the year.