Ken Fox wrote:Wine is not farmed; grapes are. Coffee beans are an agricultural commodity, not a finished consumable product. They require many additional steps before they can be consumed, including shipping from the point of origin, importation to the country receiving them (generally elsewhere), wholesale distribution and selection, roasting, (sometimes grinding), packaging, retail distribution, and then retail sale. Each of these steps markedly increases the price along the way.
Wine is a finished product that can either be sold through a normal distribution system or directly by the winery (as is done on mailing lists and/or at tasting rooms). A large percentage of the wine sold in the world (especially the best ones) is sold and consumed in the country of origin for relatively high prices, which isobviously not true of coffee, a product grown primarily in the less developed world.
Wine grapes sell for a hell of a lot less than their final product receives in a wine bottle when sold, but at a higher percentage of the total price of the consumable product than does green coffee. This is due to the lack of much of a local market for green coffee, the poverty in the producing countries, overproduction, and all the other steps necessary before coffee can be sold as a finished product in countries that have a population willing and able to pay for it.
One would have to either eliminate some of the steps in production (which increase prices) or reduce markups at each step, in order to have this coffee - wine pricing analogy make any sense or ever actually be played out in the real world. Otherwise, coffee would rapidly become a beverage consumed only by the rich, and not the everyday product as one now encounters it in the world marketplace.
There are certain points of comparison. Let's compare a Premiere Cru Bordeaux, to the Bordeaux of coffee, Kenyan.
150 acres of a Premiere Cru gives about 1,125,000 200ml servings.
150 acres of Kenyan gives about 4,250,000 16gram double espresso servings.
Each 200ml glass, at $500/bottle, of a Premiere Cru will cost the consumer about $133.00.
Each Kenyan double espresso, at $20/Lb, will cost the consumer about $000.71 (not including cost of espresso machine/grinder).
150 acres of a Premiere Cru will end with $150,000,000 in final retail sales to the consumer in one year, the majority of which is sold in the US, UK and a growing amount in China I believe.
150 acres of super Kenyan at $20/Lb will end with about $3,000,000 in final retail sales directly from the roaster to the consumer in one year; most of which covers the roasting operations in the consuming countries.
150 acres of super Kenyan would be owned by about 150 farming families, so one acre each, grouped into cooperatives. These families have received almost nothing in the past for what they grow. The amount of work required in the cultivation and processing is akin to wine; coffee cherries take about twice as long to mature than grapes for example.
Zin1953 might shed more light on the whole wine world. Hopefully my #s are correct and there aren't any extra 0's!
More on Kenyan coffee (photos by my boss),
http://terroircoffee.smugmug.com/.../3990865#233365320Ken Fox wrote:The best coffees will certainly continue to attract high prices, but the overall market for very expensive coffee (say, over $15/lb in roasted and packaged form) is very limited, and unlikely to increase very much until or unless most people view coffee as a luxury good rather than as a hot black liquid drug delivery system for caffeine.
ken
The momentum is there for it to be viewed as a luxury, and it doesn't take many more $s/Lb to make a big difference. It also seems like quality is slowly evolving more than devolving, for the moment.
