Generally, I think I hear that overall the best are better than they were 20 years ago. In bean quality and Espresso blends. I've only got 5 years of buying the best homeroasting beans and buying an occasional raved about roasted bag and reading comments to go by. Should I be optimistic with things to come or are we now past the peak?

farmroast wrote:Generally, I think I hear that overall the best are better than they were 20 years ago. In bean quality and Espresso blends. I've only got 5 years of buying the best homeroasting beans and buying an occasional raved about roasted bag and reading comments to go by. Should I be optimistic with things to come or are we now past the peak?

Things are going to get a lot better. Unfortunately, this is going to happen in about 40 years and we are all going to be dead. But it is something to look forward to in the afterlife.

ken

another_jim wrote:-- The premium buying group is still small enough overall not to strain resource limits. There's room to expand production in the best growing areas; the same can no longer be said of wine.

Sorry Jim, that is simply flat out wrong. In many cases the "best growing areas" are only now in the process of being discovered, and in many others there's a huge amount of acreage that has been controlled by mediocre producers, whose vineyards and wineries are being snapped up by high end players. The southern Rhone valley has been undergoing such a transition in the last decade, as has Chablis, Bordeaux, and even Burgundy.

And this is not even addressing places like the "Midi" in France, appellations like "Costieres de Nimes," that used to produce mostly industrial alcohol from surplus wines, that is now producing some world class wines.

And I've only addressed France, which I know better than the other viticultural areas. The same thing is going on in many other wine producing countries all over the world.

ken

Ken Fox wrote:Things are going to get a lot better. Unfortunately, this is going to happen in about 40 years and we are all going to be dead. But it is something to look forward to in the afterlife.

ken

Hey, speak for yourself! I hope to still be here in forty years.

Also, I am excited to see what comes. People always compare the coffee trade to the wine trade (I have done so myself), but I think the realities are different. I recall posting in the thread about the $12 cup of coffee (I thought it could be worth it) and even people on this board were talking about how that was out of line. The reality is, there are bottles of wine that people think are a bargain at several hundred dollars per bottle. Easily $100 per glass or more. Apparently we will never get there with coffee; people still see it as a commodity or at least more commodity like. Hopefully prices will be supportable at a high enough level, as a few have alluded to here, to permit the better growers to continue to invest in quality. If this happens, I am excited for 40 years from now -- when I will still be posting on this board about the next great crop of [insert coffee here]. The machines will undoubtedly have a few new bells and whistles as well!

Jim,

There is a helluva lot more new going on in wine production, both as regards quality, and improvements in the price to quality ratio, than is going on in coffee. It is ridiculous to even question that and your initial post shows a surprising lack of knowledge in that area being as you are also a wine drinker.

And yes, a lot of high quality stuff at relatively low prices has appeared in recent years. To take just one example, Chablis used to have one great producer (Raveneau) and one very good one (Dauvissat), with all the rest being average or worse. In the last 5 years at least 4 or 5 other producers have risen to the excellent to outstanding ranks -- Wm. Fevre, Dampf, Brocard, Defaix, and even Droin. I have bought outstanding Chablis for $30/bottle, and very very very good premier crus for ~$20 as recently as last year.

The exact same point could be illustrated with examples from Bordeaux (especially in the 2008 vintage), the Rhone valley, and Burgundy.

In the same period, the improvements in high end coffee availabilities have been exceedingly modest in comparison. The fact that you would make the opposite argument is beyond puzzling, and it is clearly mistaken.

ken

I think the biggest gain in coffee the last few years has come from shipping improvements (vacuum and grain pro). I worry that some good farmers who are getting paid better may consider increasing yields using more added commercial fertilizers rather than just improving the health and natural rejuvenation of their soils when needed and not over taxing their soils for yields. Thus retaining the origin qualities.
With some of the best micro-roasters now expanding I also wonder if some of those very special micro-lots may become harder to find or will end up being combined.

farmroast wrote:Generally, I think I hear that overall the best are better than they were 20 years ago.

I'm sure that someone on this board is still hoarding some of those best beans. It's an empirical question that can be settled by an A-B cupping.

Ken and Jim, you guys need to stop picking at each other! You are not hearing what the other person is trying to say... As Jim pointed out its a lot easier to expand in the coffee world than the wine world. There is no more acreage available in Chablis. That said, quality of existing producers have improved enormously over the past years both in the world of wine and coffee.