A New Story of Trinidad Coffee

 

This article originally appeared in The Intellectual Magazine and can be found at: 

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How much coffee do we produce in Trinidad and Tobago? 

I don't know if anyone knows for sure, but it seems that less than 1000 kg of dried coffee berries are produced from remnant fields for local consumption. When you consider that in Brazil, one hectare of Robusta coffee farms produce between 1800 - 3000 kg of coffee per year. In Trinidad and Tobago, the highest production of coffee seems to have been in 1978 with about 4,380 tonnes produced from farms across the country with a total production area of approximately 14,722 hectares. About 84% of these farms had coffee as a companion crop with cocoa as the dominant crop, so pure stands of coffee were not common. Steady declines in production were noted from that time to the present. Better prices for cocoa, the unavailability of labour for harvesting and conversion of coffee lands may have been three of the main reasons for the decline of coffee production.

What kind of coffee do we have in Trinidad? 

There are at least 21 varieties of Robusta coffee and several varieties of Arabica coffee grown in the country. Robusta seems to be more common and prefers a lower altitude for good growth in comparison to the Arabica varieties. Anecdotal evidence suggested that we had a favoured coffee and had secured a viable export market in the past. However, if you browse the internet to find comparisions on both types of coffee, you will see a lot of apparently uninformed opinions that Robusta is a low grade, bad tasting coffee. Granted that there are varieties of Robusta that do have a bad taste or may be too acidic, this is also true for some varieties of Arabica. Globally, there are more than 100 varieties of Robusta coffee and many varieties are as good as or superior to some premium Arabica varieties. In fact Viet Nam is perhaps the world's largest producer of Robusta coffee (exporting almost 1.3 million tonnes in 2012) and if the beans were really that bad, nobody would buy so much of them.

Much of the roasted coffee sold as Trinidad coffee comes from beans imported from the USA and Brazil with about 215 tonnes of unroasted beans purchased in 2012. So, there is an opportunity to stimulate the re-development of the local coffee industry and promote roasting of local coffee beans. One example of the use of local coffee beans is the story of Cafe Vega a small cottage operation started in central Trinidad. Based on an evaluation of 15 Robusta varieties, a few with superior flavour were selected for production and coffee roasting. Cafe Vega hand selects the ripe healthy berries which are then sun dried for several weeks, hulled and roasted to bring out the finer characteristics of the beans. A premium roast is also prepared utilising wet processed beans, which tends to bring out different aspects of a bean's flavour profile. Cafe Vega hopes to encourage more farmers to grow the superior varieties of local coffee so that local roasters will be able to promote our unique flavours and quality.