Foodservice Monthly - Santa Lucia Estate Coffee

16 • April 2005
Foodservice Monthly
by Michael Birchenall
T
oday’s chef/restaurateur/distributor – the foodservice professional
involved in the chain of the distribution of a food product – wants to
know where the food he is selling or serving comes from, how it was
grown, how it was handled and shipped before it was received on his loading
dock. Sometimes it may be a matter of a visit to a vegetable grower in
Pennsylvania, a chicken farm on the Eastern Shore, a fishing boat on the
Atlantic coast or a winery in Burgundy.
To learn more about the cup of coffee served in our restaurants –
Washington offers a unique opportunity to go to the source – in this case the
mountain region of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, the home of El Cielo Plantation.
Washington is the home of Santa Lucia Estate Coffee and its president William
Gutierrez and his wife Jodi Lehr. They supply coffee to many of Washington’s
best restaurants. This reporter has visited the U.S. roasting partner Dallis
Coffee in New York – where the green coffee beans are shipped, roasted and
then sent to the restaurant accounts.
The visit to Nicaragua was organized in collaboration with the Nicaraguan
Government and with special support of Salvador Stadthagen, Nicaraguan
Ambassador to the United States and Canada. Traveling in the group were Jeffrey
Tunks, David Wizenberg, Gus DiMillo David Guas (from Ceiba, DC Coast and
Ten Penh) Dan Mesches, (Star Restaurant Group – Zola and Red Sage), David
DeLulio and Gil Fornaris from Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Jeff Buben (Vidalia and
Bistro Bis), David Dallis and members of the Dallis Coffee team and Robert
Campion and Celine Gould from Dairyland, The Chefs’ Warehouse.
The history of Nicaragua has been well documented in the last twenty
Gus DiMillo takes a quick slurp of the brewed cup to
taste the coffee as if you were doing a wine tasting.
The Newsmagazine Foodservice Professionals Read
April 2005 • 19
years in the world press – and doesn’t need to be rehashed here. What needs to
said is that Nicaragua is a poor country struggling to find improve its economic
status, to improve its infrastructure while trying to find a way to participate in
the world’s global market. Parts of Nicaragua are still dangerous … we traveled
with an armed guard into the mountains (strictly as a precaution, we never saw
or sensed any danger).
To reach the highland estate of El Cielo in Matagalpa, we traveled over
rough dirt roads with increasingly steep inclines and slippery slopes. We passed
coffee plantations on the lower levels but David Dallis, president of Dallis
Coffee, told us that the favored premium beans are found at the highest elevations where the growing season is maximized in the cooler altitude. As we
approached the summit of 5,000 feet, we had to abandon our rental van for the
four-wheel vehicles to reach the top.
Here we found the plantation – at this moment nearing the end of the
harvest and home of the wet station – the first processing of the picked fruit.
The ripe berries are brought into the building and the pulp is mechanically
separated. Then the beans are washed and debris is removed as fresh water
flows over the beans. The drying process starts on a concrete slab in the sun –
and then the beans are bagged and taken down the mountain for the drying. At
all stages, imperfect and unripe examples are separated from the best beans.
We could all see that Santa Lucia Estate coffee beans are carefully chosen for
their size, shape, weight and color.
The beans go into a drying process that brings the bean to its proper moisture content – for controlled roasting. On the flatlands, we found the new roasting facility that Dallis has built – to U.S. standards. Here the beans are roasted,
tested and cupped to discern proper flavor and quality. The coffee can be packaged here and then sent to market. The coffee sold in the DC area is shipped
green to New York and is roasted there before being shipped to customers.
The Process of Making Great Coffee
Beans on the coffee plant ripen at different times –
they must be handpicked to get the ripe ones only and
then picked again as others ripen.
Beans are washed to remove debris.
The mechanical process where the pulp is
separated from the coffee bean.
Beans are dried, bagged and shipped
down the mountain for the dry processing.