I can’t imagine anyone who enjoys a cup of coffee likes the swill you can get at so many places – I’m looking at you cruise lines. When given the choice most of us would like to have a great bean with robust and deep flavor. Personally I don’t care where my coffee comes from, but if you’re one of those big fans of Ethiopian beans you might want to stop at your local purveyor to pick up a bag because the Ethiopian coffee you know and love could likely become homogenized.
The Ethiopian government has suspended the licenses of the country’s largest coffee exporters in reaction to suspicion the exporters are keeping the coffee off the market to increase the price. Yirgacheffe is the most widely respected and known of Ethiopian coffee beans, but since the government trademarked the name in 2006 it’s come to represent Ethiopian coffee as a whole.
The Ethiopian government followed this up in December by telling coffee growers sell their beans through the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange. The intention was to ensure all of the growers got a fair price, and as coffee beans are the main export of the country it was hoped this would keep the farmers even on finances.
The problem is that now when an importing company, like Starbucks, gets Yirgacheffe coffee it is no longer a region specific bean. The name still denotes a region to many coffee drinking snobs, but really you have no idea where that bag of beans came from as it all gets mixed together.
But good coffee is still good coffee, no matter its origin. So as long as this does good things economically for the struggling Ethiopian nation I have no qualms about buying a bag of Yirgacheffe coffee beans, even if there’s some Harrar and Limu in the mix.
