Invitation only coffees - rmiguelcoffee.com - Page 3

[cai42]

Greetings,

Just go to his website, register, he emails you back the password. You are now invited. I don't know if the password changes but mine was "Welcome", just like the greeting on the opening screen. Just a marketing gimmick! The "by invitation" response took about 35 seconds.

Cliff Isackson

[Abe Carmeli]

I too would hope that this is the direction that coffee is going, but I have two concerns. One is that it is VERY expensive for farmers to do what Graciano Cruz has been able to do

It is a good point. How about this angle: look at him as a developer of a prototype. The goal in this early design is to see whether we can push the quality of coffee up a few notches, with no concern at this stage to the price. What is the potential of those beans? In aviation it would be, can we break the speed of sound? The market's job will be to find a way to get there cheaper.

if the benefactor gets all the good coffee, what does that leave for the rest of the market? In truth, it leaves us with plenty of good coffee, but the principle is feudalistic rather than democratic. The best beans are pulled off the market for the rich to enjoy. Again, I'd prefer to see this done in an open-market system like the CoE competitions.

I do not see a contradiction with the CoE here, they are rather complementary. The best way to improve the farmer's bottom line, and release him from the current chains of Feudal relationships, like it is in Ethiopia, is to modernize processing, and separate it from farming. None of those farmers have the know how or the capital to properly process their beans. They never will. The benefactor in this case is foreign investment in processing plants, and infrastructure in those farming communities. When processing costs the same for everyone, and is standardized like wine making, the farmers can turn their attention to bean cultivation. Natural processing in particular cries for a new processing method. This is no rocket science. The food industry knows how to prevent fermentation at a relatively low cost. It is just a matter of seeing profit in that whole venture.

[CoffeeOwl]

Consider prices of best quality teas (white, green, yellow, red or even the black).
If some reasonable percent of the price goes to the farmers, it's a good initiative.

[Vidio]

At the suggestion or Miguel I brewed a cup today rather than make espresso with it. Although this is against my religion I did it anyway. I shall go to confession later and atone for this sin. Anyway the taste was very delicious and I see now that certain of the flavors were only revealed in the brewed cup. It was absolutely unlike any cup of coffee I ever tasted. Never the less on my next order I will ask Miquel to special roast for espresso for me as that is the real taste I enjoy. (Yes there will be a next order and yes he will custom roast for you.)

Is this a marketing thing? Absolutely and may I add that this web site contributes to his marketing plan. I don't think I would have found his site if not for the publicity here. But my background is in marketing and business communications so I went into it fully knowing what I was doing. I totally understood I was being lured in by a marketing device but it tweaked my curiosity. I will say I was not disappointed in the outcome. The coffee was distinctive enough to justify the marketing. Not only that but it makes me want to try some of the other special coffees that people have mentioned here in this discussion. So it might be good for coffee roasters in general.

Someone here said it was priced for "the Bentley crowd." I'm not sure this is absolutely true. $50 or $75 is not going to put anyone in debt if you want to just sample a little tin. To me it is like when you visit a city or theme park and you buy some little souvenir tin of candy or something that is priced way more than normal. Its a bit of an extravagance but something you hope will be a little special. So I have taken a little visit to "Miguel Land" and I do think the coffee flavor is unique and delicious enough that one is not unhappy with their decision. Anyone who agrees to spend $75 for a little tin has to know it is a bit of marketing hype. But it does help to elevate the worth of coffee in general and somehow give it that special status it deserves.

I don't pretend to understand all the politics, economics and detailed analysis that others here who know much more than I have commented on. It is interesting to read the comments and enjoyable that coffee can generate this level of discussion.

[popeye]

The median price for a pound of green coffee is $5.00. Sometimes $4.00, sometimes $6.00. Anything over $7.00 seems to be "premium." The coffee is better, but is it worth it? At $160 to $260 a green pound, these coffees are not the "Ferraris" or "Lamborghinis" of the coffee world - they are priced above that. Assuming an average car costs $25k, these coffees would cost $800,000 and $1,300,000 if we were comparing them to cars.

I can understand if - indeed i hope - a lot of the money is going back to the farmers. Increased quality means increased costs. But as with ultra-luxury automobiles, it usually means increased profit margins for all involved. And the image of cultured elitism associated with this program does nothing but reinforce my feelings that EVERYBODY is enjoying a cut of the profits.

So that's what really makes me uncomfortable. In an industry that has always seemed democratic and egalitarian (with the exception of Italy and espresso), I'm being pitched exclusive coffees by a man dressed as a luxury car salesman. Now, I've done a decent amount of business with Paradise Roasters, and actually just received a pound of premium espresso (Havana Reserve) from them (thank you very much for supporting the HB wishlist). I've a lot of respect for Paradise Roasters as a whole, and that's why I feel this is so uncharacteristic for them, and for R. Miguel. From what I can understand about the company from their website - particularly the "staff" section, it seems to be a family business.

I've interacted with Paradise Roasters enough that they help shape my understanding of the coffee roasting business, to some extent. So I write all of this to say that I hope the premium coffee market expands, but not along the lines of the RMiguel program. In fact, i hope the program changes to promote premium coffees as i'd like to see them promoted - without the premium attitude. On this thread, others have noted that the development of these coffees has many benefits and few downsides. I can't afford to buy much coffee over $10 a pound, but it's seems good for all of us if it exists. And i would buy it once in a blue moon.

So, here's my plea. Drop the exclusiveness. Drop the mystique. Show us how you're helping the farmers, and the industry. By your openness, encourage us that you're not taking profit margins comparable to those of luxury cars. And then i'll take 4oz of that green Gesha.

[treshell]

OK its cost a lot!
But then he is offering at in 1/4 pound size so that for something really special most could afford to try it.

I was talking to some friends about Blue Mountain coffee. When you remember that the folks on the farm can and do get $5.50 right out of the field and you further remember that by the time it gets to the roaster it most likely is going for about $15.50 it would be very nice if you could buy 1/4 pound of it roasted. One of those friends bought 1/4 pound for $30.00 a few years ago and he still glows at having had it. I guess if you really want to get folks to grow a really special coffee you need to come up with folks who will sell it at the value that will make other growers grow it as well.
treshell who has yet to drink Blue Mountain or any of these but I will---

[cai42]

Greetings,

Did I miss something on Miguel's website? His business has nothing to do with helping the coffee farmers, it's all about selling expensive coffee to people who don't mind spending the money and helping Miguel. Nothing wrong with that. Vote with your wallet! Buy or don't buy.

Cliff Isackson (not buying)

[Marshall]

I almost pulled the trigger on the Aurora tonight, but stopped cold at the shipping. I had my choice of $9.17 for UPS Ground (for 4 oz!), which would take around a week from Minnesota to L.A., or $20.56 for 2-day air. I just couldn't bring myself to pay $70.56 for a timely delivery of 4 oz. of coffee. So I joined Ecco Caffe's Experimental Espresso Club, instead.

This highlights one of coffee's key obstacles in competing with wine: perishibility

This is the one and only time in my life I ever wished I lived in Minnesota, instead of California.

[Ken Fox]

I almost pulled the trigger on the Aurora tonight, but stopped cold at the shipping. I had my choice of $9.17 for UPS Ground (for 4 oz!), which would take around a week from Minnesota to L.A., or $20.56 for 2-day air. I just couldn't bring myself to pay $70.56 for a timely delivery of 4 oz. of coffee. So I joined Ecco Caffe's Experimental Espresso Club, instead.

This highlights one of coffee's key obstacles in competing with wine: perishibility

This is the one and only time in my life I ever wished I lived in Minnesota, instead of California.

The coffee-wine analogy fails on many levels. Among them is that wine is sold as a finished product, in a sealed container, which if treated with minimal respect will last decades, assuming this is the sort of wine worth buying and that will age.

Coffee is sold either as a green, unroasted, unfinished product, or as a roasted, unfinished product. Whether or not you have to roast it, you still need to grind it and extract a beverage out of it before it is to be consumed. During this preparation phase, there is considerable risk of ending up with a substandard result from what was a first rate but unfinished product. Allowing for the need for grinder adjustment, the likelihood of a 100% yield (e.g. all of it being consumed and none poured down the drain) approaches zero. With wine, all you need to do is pull the cork and pour it out; there is no further processing needed and no risk of damage in the serving phase.

Expensive wines are almost always "ageworthy," and if well chosen, will increase in value over the aging period. Coffee is very perishable, whether in the green or roasted state. Barring some sort of bizarre situation, it will never increase in value and in fact will decrease in value faster than a new car just driven off the dealer's lot.

ken

[Matthew Brinski]

The coffee-wine analogy fails on many levels. Among them is that wine is sold as a finished product, in a sealed container, which if treated with minimal respect will last decades, assuming this is the sort of wine worth buying and that will age.

Coffee is sold either as a green, unroasted, unfinished product, or as a roasted, unfinished product. Whether or not you have to roast it, you still need to grind it and extract a beverage out of it before it is to be consumed. During this preparation phase, there is considerable risk of ending up with a substandard result from what was a first rate but unfinished product. Allowing for the need for grinder adjustment, the likelihood of a 100% yield (e.g. all of it being consumed and none poured down the drain) approaches zero. With wine, all you need to do is pull the cork and pour it out; there is no further processing needed and no risk of damage in the serving phase.

Expensive wines are almost always "ageworthy," and if well chosen, will increase in value over the aging period. Coffee is very perishable, whether in the green or roasted state. Barring some sort of bizarre situation, it will never increase in value and in fact will decrease in value faster than a new car just driven off the dealer's lot.

ken

Indeed. This is why I keep going back and forth about this whole concept with the R. Miguel deal and all. I still don't know what to truly think about it. There are many GREAT coffees out there that don't demand this type of price. I am not saying that the coffees being offered by R. Miguel aren't worth the money, but it is just difficult for me to invest such money in something that I must consume in a certain time period, something that I can't bank on for a little bit. Despite my mixed feelings about the R. Miguel approach, I hope that it is successful even if it doesn't align with my current preferences of how coffee should be marketed. Successful promotion and sales of this type in the coffee industry can positively affect other areas of the industry either directly or indirectly.

I also wish people would get past this coffee / wine analogy. As Ken said, it fails on many levels. Coffee needs to be understood and promoted for what IT is, not what it is like. I'm tired of the wine reference. Actually, I hate it.

[Ken Fox]

Indeed.

I also wish people would get past this coffee / wine analogy. As Ken said, it fails on many levels. Coffee needs to be understood and promoted for what IT is, not what it is like. I'm tired of the wine reference. Actually, I hate it.

I love wine and I love coffee. Of the two, I have a lot more money invested in wine than I'll ever spend on coffee or coffee equipment.

This coffee-wine analogy has been around forever, and has never made much sense to me. Neither one is worth anything more than what one is willing to pay for it. The free market will define their prices, which will have nothing whatever to do with the price of the other item as they are not competitive beverages and do not occupy the same market niche.

It is like comparing foie gras to caviar. Both are food items consumed by rich people, but the price of one has virtually nothing to do with the price of the other. Just because caviar goes up in price as the Caspian Sea becomes more and more polluted (hence reducing supply and increasing price) this says nothing about what the farmers in the Dordogne Valley will get for their goose livers The supply of caviar is somewhat fixed, but nothing stops the farmers from raising more geese and ducks to meet demand, if there is an increase in the number of rich people who want to pickle their coronary arteries.

ken

[Marshall]

The wine analogy has its limits, but that does not make it useless. There is still a large population that believes "coffee is coffee," an undifferentiated commodity. To them "specialty coffee" means flavorings, milk foam, whipped cream and other additives.

There the wine analogy serves the useful function of explaining the influence of terroir, proper harvesting and processing and why they should be willing to part with more money for a COE Brazil than a commodity Brazil.

It breaks down where, as in my case, I might pay $60 ($50 plus $10 for UPS Ground shipping), for an extraordinary bottle of wine that will arrive in perfect condition and can be drunk at my leisure, but not for 1/4 lb. of roasted coffee that will have spent its prime in transit across country.

[Abe Carmeli]

The wine analogy has its limits, but that does not make it useless.

Indeed. There is no need to go postal on the wine analogy. It is also useful as a business model for specialty coffee and the economical forces in both markets are very similar. But I agree that as a commodity - a product they are very different... see Ken's comments above, who by the way was stating the obvious (twice) .

[KarlSchneider]

This coffee-wine analogy has been around forever, and has never made much sense to me. Neither one is worth anything more than what one is willing to pay for it. The free market will define their prices,

ken

Analogies are often complicated. Perhaps there is some part of the wine / coffee analogy that does apply. Imagine purchasing (to use Abe Carmelli's analogy) the following 2005 wines from H. Gouges:

Bourgogne $30
Nuits-St.-Georges Village $55
Nuits-St.-Georges Premier Cru Clos Porrets $85
Nuits-St.-Georges Premier Cru Les-St-Georges $180.

There will be a distinct quality step increase from the $30/bottle wine to the $55. But there will not be a tripling of quality in the Clos Porrets over the Bourgogne. A difference certainly but not a tripling. Nor will there be a doubling of quality in the step from the Clos Porrets to the Les-St-Georges. One pays for ever smaller increments of quality increase as one reaches the higher levels. One has to decide if the increments are worth it for oneself.

I suspect the same with these coffees. To me $18/pound green Kona is worth the difference.

KS

[Rainman]

Did anyone notice this?


It may be a trivial thing, as it's only a photo taken when he was posing.. but with a CIGAR? I've seen smoking and coffee cupping debated in several places between different online forums and even in some books, but you'd think the photographer would have suggested he ace the cigar.

So as a side note- how significantly does smoking affect your ability to taste coffee?

Ray

[Matthew Brinski]

Indeed. There is no need to go postal on the wine analogy.

I have been going postal lately ... I apologize, a little. I just believe that many people make way more of the correlation between wine and coffee than what actually exists. My point is that I really think that specialty coffee shouldn't have to "borrow" its purpose or plan from another industry. Excellent coffee should possess the ability of being presented to the consumer with its special aspects highlighted, all while standing on its own two feet. Wine can be used as an example of pointing out regional differences in coffee, but even then, such an analogy isn't necessary. I just personally think it is somewhat misguided when some individuals in the coffee industry attempt to follow the wine industry.

Which brings me back around to the R. Miguel coffees ...

I wonder who the core consumers will be, and if their purchase of such coffees will elevate or stagnate the idea of what specialty coffee is to them. They are receiving a product that is not in its completed form.

Again, I do hope that there is success to this venture, because it can only have positive effects on other areas of the coffee industry.

[Ken Fox]

Indeed. There is no need to go postal on the wine analogy. It is also useful as a business model for specialty coffee and the economical forces in both markets are very similar. But I agree that as a commodity - a product they are very different... see Ken's comments above, who by the way was stating the obvious (twice) .

We haven't killed anyone yet

You have an inverse situation with the two products.

With coffee, you have a beverage that is drunk by a huge percentage of the population, but almost all of it is commodity grade and horrid.

With wine you have a beverage that is drunk by a relatively small percentage of the population, and most of what is drunk is at least "swallowable." The closest you can come to commodity grade wine is the worst of the stuff you might buy out of a large barrel in a bad French supermarket, wine in a box, or possibly "Two Buck Chuck," whatever that costs these days. The commodity wine product that is at the level of average coffee, might be used in Sangria or drunk specifically for the purpose of getting drunk. For those who haven't been paying attention, the consumption of bad cheap wine in Europe has plummeted over the last couple of decades.

Now, granted, most people approach coffee as if it were a drug delivery system for caffeine, so in that sense the average person on an airplane drinking the black swill offered by the stewardess, is akin to the college student or wino who buys cheap wine for a buzz. So, at the bottom rung you have two commodity products, one with a huge market share (coffee), where it represents the overwhelming majority of what is produced, and with the other product (wine) the bottom rung is targeted at an aberrant audience containing many people we would not want to have as neighbors.

There isn't much of a middle rung in coffee, other than by pricing, and since almost all of this range of coffee is going to be very stale, a true coffee connoisseur would have little interest in it. You can't simply take coffee by price and assign market ranges to it, since almost all of it is stale, if anyone actually tastes the stuff they'll realize that the incremental price increase that they paid for the stuff did not result in a much better cup of coffee. The middle rung of wine, which for the sake of illustration I'll describe as being from maybe $7.50 a bottle (in the US; cheaper in Europe) to maybe $25 or $30, can in fact be quite good. Our friends and neighbors and probably we ourselves drink this level of wine a large percentage of the time when we drink wine. But, wine is a minority beverage and the market penetration is nowhere approaching what it is for coffee, so it remains a beverage of "cultured people and snobs" in the view of the public.

At the high end of coffee, which has a miniscule market share, you could have everything from a good local roaster to what you might buy from Miguel's new operation. The price range is huge, and one has every reason to expect excellence and freshness. At the high end of wine, you have wines that only well off people can afford, except for perhaps very special occasions. One would hope that these are all excellent. However small the high end market for wine is, it is hugely bigger than the market for high end coffee. I'd bet that a huge majority percentage of those who drink expensive wines regularly drink horrid coffee and have no particular interest in coffee as a "fine beverage."

So what we have is much more similarities in the commodity ends of both of these beverages, although we don't turn up our nose at the coffee plonk drinkers, we do at wine plonk drinkers. At the mid range there is no comparability to speak of, which makes the analogy useless because most wine sold is probably at least "drinkable" which cannot be said of most coffee (and by a huge margin). At the high end there are again some similarities, but not a lot of crossover in the target audiences.

The major reason why the fine wine industry has grown exponentially is that they have been able to make better and better products, at prices that the average person can afford. Their products are shelf stable and can be easily delivered to customers in a condition that it is worth consuming. People buy them, like them, and buy more.

The major difficulties that the fine coffee industry has are that most people already drink it (but regard it as a drug, not a fine beverage), and that the product cannot really be appreciated unless it is very fresh (and properly prepared), which makes delivery into the marketplace a very costly challenge. Simply trying to replicate what the wine industry has done, with coffee, will fail, because regardless of the efforts put out, most people will be confronted with the stuff poorly prepared, and in stale, not fresh, form.

ken

[Abe Carmeli]

Greetings,

Did I miss something on Miguel's website? His business has nothing to do with helping the coffee farmers, it's all about selling expensive coffee to people who don't mind spending the money and helping Miguel. Nothing wrong with that. Vote with your wallet! Buy or don't buy.

Cliff Isackson (not buying)

I'd say you're being too harsh on him, perhaps misinformed. Yes, there is nothing wrong with making a profit, and even outrageous profit if people want to buy your product. But in this particular instance, the wholesale price of the green was insanely high due to the effort put in plant husbandry, processing packing and shipping. A micro lot ended up as a nano lot, air lifted at $3-$5 a pound. Jim and Bob's review tell part of the story, but there is even more to it. Importers lose money on small lots, and most CoE winners are a break even for the importer at best. The cost goes up exponentially, and those are things he has no control over.

But beyond that, Miguel is a true pioneer in pushing quality in coffee, and does it almost out of a religious belief. If you spend some time talking to him you will understand that his goal is to improve coffee processing & repeatability at the source, infuse science into it and push it a few notches up.

Most of the exceptional coffees and CoE winners are haphazard accidents. These growers have no way of repeating their success cause they lack the proper processing standards and in many cases they are clueless as to why the crop in a particular year turned up so well

Now, to make it clear, I don't have any allegiance to R. Miguel or Paradise. I just know a bit more about the inside of things than your average guy. But that of course does not mean that I am not for sale. who knows, if say, Folgers came up with enough money, I may stand on my soap box once again and praise their fine brew.

[bcquinn1]

I agree that wine and coffee don't compare all that well from a market perspective, other than what Ken pointed out - that there are various tiers of quality and price points that don't correlate all that well between the two products. And I totally agree that the fact that coffee isn't as finished a product as wine at the consumer end will result in a unique market evolution. But I do think that as Marshall pointed out, the wine analogy can be very useful in mapping the evolution of production processes, and how that impacted the market evolution. I think that the coffee industry could take a closer look at what's driven improvement in the wine glass, because I personally see a lot of parallels.

If I think about the three major advances in wine making over the past 50 years, I would broadly label them as 1) increased focus on cultivation and fruit quality 2) improved fermentation control (temperature, length, etc.) and 3) improved processing hygiene. You could argue with me about how I ordered them, and the exact buckets, but I feel pretty confident in saying that there have been some definite advances on those three dimensions.

As for 1), if anyone wants to argue that increased attention to yield, pruning, ripeness, and sorting of coffee at the fruit stage has no impact in the cup, good luck. Just try taking some green coffee, and sort it into two lots - all of the chipped, wrinkled, moldy, wormed, and other defective beans (and you'll find some in just about any lot of green you can buy, unless you're at the super-premium end), and the leftover beans. Roast and brew a cup of each, and taste the difference. There is no doubt that quality begins in the soil, elevation, water, etc. and continues in cultivation, pruning, ripening, and sorting at the fruit stage. And any winemaker would likely talk to you first about the growing and farming philosophies of their vineyards before saying a thing about what they do with oak, maceration, etc..

I would personally love to see the same evolution in coffee. Taste the Brazils that Daterra produces vs. other growers, and tell me that cultivation doesn't matter. And in the wine industry, the premium market was one of the biggest drivers of improved viniculture. I'm not saying that the coffee industry will necessarily support the sort of painfully low fruit yields that top cabernet producers aim for, but I think there's room for improvement, even in the specialty market.

Same thing goes for 2) improved fermentation control and 3) processing hygiene. Modern wineries use a variety of methods, including precise temperature control, to control the fermentation very precisely - down to the minute of length and single degree of Farenheit throughout the process. Abe makes a great point about natural processing - it just shouldn't be that difficult to control the fermentation. Selfishly, I detest strawberry and blueberry ferment flavors in coffee, and so I would love to see increased control here. Modern wineries are also absolutely paranoid about bacterial contamination, and preserving freshness throughout the production process. The occurrence of TCA and brettanomyces and other bacterial contamination in wine has dropped significantly over the past 50 years, largely through improved hygiene at the production facilities. Beyond that, wineries do everything in their power to make sure that the grapes are turned into juice as quickly as possible, once the fruit has been picked off the vine. At Paul Hobbs, the winemaker even talked about how they purchased a portable sorting table, so that they can sort right at the factory, and immediately start processing the grapes. Why are they still shipping coffee in jute bags? Ask the guys at Terroir if storing green coffee in ambient jute vs. air-tight plastic in cold storage makes a difference.

I get that coffee is a very distinct, separate product, and obviously will have its own evolution and set of particulars when it comes to production and marketing. But wine was also a purely commodity product at one point in time (maybe 2000 years ago), and for a lot of people, it was also primarily a chemical delivery system. Hell, the ancient Romans and Greeks used to add honey to their wines to make them drinkable - sound like anything your average coffee drinker does?

The wine industry has evolved into a rather successful global beverage industry that supports a variety of market positions and niches. I'm personally glad that I have a few choices beyond the Franzia when I would like a nice glass at the end of the day. Given that, and given how nascent the premium coffee industry is, I'm not sure I'd be sniffing about NIH (Not Invented Here) at this stage.

[cai42]

Greetings,

CoffeeCuppers has given ratings in the 89-91 to numerous coffees but their prices were not in the $160 to $260/lb range. Is a coffee rated between 92 to 96 deserve a five to twenty times price increase? I am taking about ratings not the amount of coffee available for sale.

Cliff Isackson