CoffeeGeek.com - April 02, 2005

The Third Wave
By Nick Cho

MANY MAY HAVE heard me in a piece on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, which aired when many of us were in Seattle for the USBC this past March. In that piece, I referred to the "Third Wave of Coffee" concept, which I must take the opportunity right now to credit Trish Skeie, from Taylor Maid Farms Organic Coffee and Tea, for coming up with. The idea is that the first wave of coffee across the country and around the world was the initial proliferation of coffee, which one might say peaked in North America during the post World War II era with freeze-dried coffee flooding the marketplace. During this time, coffee was 'consumed' more than it was 'enjoyed,' but at least people were drinking coffee.

The second wave is the introduction of espresso beverages to the world, as well as the elevation of overall coffee quality, abandoning all-robusta coffee in favor of the arabica species. Starbucks, the initial Juan Valdez Colombian coffee campaign, and the sudden ubiquity of espresso machines all over the continent are all part of this second wave.

So what of this 'Third Wave?' In an admittedly esoteric way, I usually refer to the 'Third Wave' as letting the coffee speak for itself. During the first two waves, we appreciated coffee for what it gives us: caffeine, a hot beverage to sip and enjoy a conversation over, a drink to modify with sweetener, dairy (or non-dairy) creamers, syrups, whipped cream, etc. The Third Wave is about enjoying coffee for what it is.

Coffee is a crop, that cannot forever be marketed, sold, and purchased the way it is today. To piggy-back on Mark Prince's article from a couple months ago, if wine was sold the way coffee is usually sold today, you'd go to a store and see a row of five to twelve bottles, with labels that say, "FRENCH WINE," "AMERICAN WINE," "ITALIAN WINE," "AUSTRALIAN WINE," etc. No vineyard or winery name, no vintage year, no nothing. Just country of origin, and that's it.

So what's missing? What's hidden? Well, vineyard that produced it of course, the specific grape, as well as the vintage year, because everybody knows that the same vineyard can produce wine that is significantly different from year-to-year.

The best coffees in the world, indeed much like wine, have inherent characteristics that dictate how they should be marketed and sold. We need to be able to walk into a store and see coffee with 'roasted-on' dating. The labels should not only give us the country of origin and degree of roast, but the actual farm or estate that it comes from. On top of that, when that particular lot of green coffee has been exhausted and a new one comes in to the roaster, the information and descriptions should be updated to reflect the new coffee.

With those new crops come new flavors that will affect the espresso blends that they make up. Blending and roasting to achieve a pre-determined 'flavor profile' year after year, believing that consistency is above all else the ultimate goal when blending and roasting for espresso... that's second-wave thinking right there. With each new lot of coffee, the roaster is given a new palette of coffees to work with, and learning how to work with that palette is Third Wave thinking... not merely trying to make them be what you want them to. Wait... looking back at the beginning of this paragraph... did someone say, 'espresso?'

Espresso is, as many have written, the soul of coffee... the essence of coffee. I like to use the illustration of the movie The Princess Bride. Remember when Westley is on that contraption and his life is being sucked out of him and into this jar as goop? Well, if Westley is a coffee bean, that goop is espresso. A double-shot, anyone?

Seriously though, while in years past, a 'barista' was someone who merely operated an espresso machine, a Third Wave barista is a student of the bean. A Third Wave barista doesn't merely focus on "How can I hurry and make these drinks for these customers as quickly as possible." It's about coaxing everything that's good from of your espresso blend, taking as much energy and effort and time as necessary... and serving THAT to your customers. A Third Wave barista is a coffee ambassador.

A true barista takes real pride in their work. A true barista finds satisfaction in realizing that some part of their technique or their 'system' was hindering their ability to produce perfect espresso, and fixing it. A true barista is a Third Wave barista.

We've been referring to all of this a wave... the Third Wave. It's a "wave" because it's indeed going to sweep across the continent. But a drop of water does not a wave make, and that's why it's going to take a real community to make this happen.

This Third Wave is not something that will happen automatically. As you've seen, there's an opposing force out there that is trying to automate 'espresso' as much as possible. Super-automatic machines are the cement-shoes that will plant this industry firmly in the second wave of coffee. There exists a persistent shroud of misinformation and disinformation that many in the coffee industry rely on to maintain their multi-million dollar companies. These corporations seek only to maximize profits while hiding the inherent truths about coffee, such as what's "fresh," about crop-to-crop variations... all the way to what constitutes a real espresso extraction.