Adios, Ristretto

To call the New York Times "the paper of record" is to pay it a great compliment, but it is not quite sufficient: It is perhaps the only paper that matters in this country. And so it mattered a great deal that Oliver Strand's Ristretto column appeared in those hallowed pages, given space beside other more celebrated indulgences such as wine, food and fashion. It elevated in the eyes of the lay-reader the humble cup of coffee to something beyond a black and bitter stimulant. And to those of us who live coffee, for whom the industry is our home, his column was a thing to be celebrated. This was a voice stating our cause on the nation's largest print stage, discussing without irony the craft of coffee, and those who are committed to it. It felt like we mattered, just a little bit, when reading about Bear Pond on the same pages as whatever lardcore eatery is currently trendy.

And it's gone now.

We are reminded on the front pages of that same paper that there are real and genuine tragedies in the world today, and that this is really not so bad, when viewed with the right perspective. So I won't call this tragic, or try and ascribe to it false importance. It was a very good newspaper column that will no longer exist. And it was only ever about coffee, really. There is no tragedy here.

And yet it's hard not to feel a sense of loss, like the community is being cheated just a little bit. This was not just a column that wrote informative articles on how to better prepare coffee, or how to procure it in certain cities. Beyond merely informing the readership about those specific things, its very existence argued that this information was worth having, that coffee was a thing worth discussing and considering. Put simply: If coffee mattered to you, Ristretto mattered to you.

There is a void now. Coffee has other articulate voices, to be sure, but they are largely sequestered away on personal blogs or in industry specific publications. James Hoffmann simply cannot reach the same number of people, and no one subscribes to Barista Magazine unless they're already convinced that the trade is worthwhile. Ristretto had that platform, and an audience of the nation's tastemakers to speak to. And in Mr. Strand, it had a voice that was educational without being condescending - something the coffee industry famously struggles with. The reader was never made to feel foolish for having never heard of a Hario V60. Instead, they finished the article interested in trying coffee prepared with one. I once had a customer order a cortado specifically because it was mentioned in Ristretto.

Of course, the tide of specialty coffee is still rising. Even within our industry, this is no measure of doom. There will be other writers in other publications doing many of the same things - perhaps Strand himself will return elsewhere. He does have a book on coffee, set to be released sometime soon I hope, for which I have high expectations. But make no mistake, this is a setback, and it is disappointing. Ristretto was, in the paper of record, the coffee column of record.

And now we are left with nothing but its record, which you can and should read.

Dare to Compare

The industry is making money, but doing so, in part, thanks to those ever so convenient "pods". Oliver Strand, James Hoffmann, and others, have written about this already, but even still, I am compelled to add a little something.

The focus, generally, is on the price of the things. It's substantial - stupidly so, when one considers the quality of the beverage produced. And yet it is fast, easy, and convenient. There is nothing to clean up, only a plastic pod to throw away. (Which, I might add, is something else to consider. Coffee filter waste is one thing; this is quite a bit more egregious.)

But mostly, I think this is about fear. Those of us in the coffee profession would like to think we're doing something worthwhile, and that we will be able to continue doing it. We value or jobs, and we really do care about creating a quality product. When that product is shunted for something inferior, it can seem something of an insult. Furthermore, it can threaten our financial viability. We fear becoming anachronistic, a host of John Henry's, put out to pasture.

In his latest post, Hoffmann calls this fact "depressing".

It is easy to point out the flaws – it doesn’t taste amazing, it is expensive.  It is proving that this stuff doesn’t really matter to the market.  Maybe we’re going to continue to ignore it, while it may slowly make what we do increasingly obsolete.  No one is going to argue that vinyl doesn’t sound better, but it doesn’t do much to change the fact that this matter less and less to people, and technology is catching up all the time. Depressing right?  If anything it ought to be inspiring us to do something about it, to move specialty coffee out of the place where people compare amazing coffee to single serve, preground pods.  I have no idea how we do this, but it is certainly worth thinking about…

Allow me to present one idea: We allow the comparison. I do not think the success of Kcups, Nespresso, and their ilk prove that people don't value flavor and quality; rather, I think it supports the notion that such things are not ubiquitous. I think if there were a distinct difference in taste, people would notice, and they could be convinced it's worth the (usually less) money. The onus is on us, then, to make coffee that is amazing, and to sell it to people. We need to force the comparison, and have faith in our product and ourselves.

Call this naive if you like, but I can't help but believe in good coffee. If we don't, how can anyone else?