He is the first Argentinian to join the coffee elite and he is now recognized by the legislature

It was one of those job crises that literally made you to change life. After years of working as an investigative journalist, Analía Alvarez has decided to fire from the board. She went to accompany her husband, also a journalist and correspondent, through Latin America. The idea was to investigate the cultures, to look for a north. But the cafe found her.

Since then, this change of life has crossed the coffee fruits, this magical grain that has literally crossed the history of mankind. Analía studied, deepened her knowledge, became the first Argentinian to achieve the highest qualification as a coffee judgeHe created a school to transmit everything he knew, opened the flagship café of the “specialty” and now he has just published a book in which all this journey is embodied in fiction.

Throughout the world I have been the consolation of the slave, the balm of suffering and the strength of the hunter; I have been the resistance of the walker, the eve of the thinker, the prayer of the believer and the courage of the soldier; I have been the medicine of the curator, the muse of the poet, the wealth of the merchant and the pleasure of the sybarite ”, he makes the coffee bean say in“ Yo, cafeto. 9 coffee stories and a manifesto ”, his first book, which was recognized by cultural interest by the legislature of the city of Buenos Aires.

Throughout the text, Analía travels the history of coffee of the ethnic groups that cultivated it in present-day Ethiopia, the cafes of Istanbul, the slave trade in the coffee plantations of Brazil, the coffee of Imperial Vienna, the car Italian … the traits of this drink steeped in history and culture, which is told through short stories featuring fictional characters.

“After traveling extensively through the coffee plantations and meeting the coffee people, I began to study the impact of men and women throughout the history of coffee. Coffee has determined very important moments in the West and in the Muslim world. I had wanted to tell it from the point of view of that time for a long time, not our own, ”he says.

But the daily routine of her business (she owns Coffee Town) has always separated her from the keyboard. Until the arrival of the pandemic. And all that it involved.

The pandemic

“We have been supported by our customers, the number of people who have ordered coffee beans or ground coffee from them. We took a kilo everywhere I went. A kilo, plus a kilo, plus a kilo … that’s how we manage to go camping, ”he is infinitely grateful.

As with many foodies, the Covid has been a blow. This forced them to shrink and close the Palermo store. In the first months of strict quarantine, the uncertainty was total. “We didn’t know how we were going to reopen,” he recalls. With a lot of effort, they managed to save the “iconic cafe” from the San Telmo market. And in those times of anguish, the writing was “an escape from those apocalyptic times.” I lost friends, famous people … Writing saved me”.

The official recognition of his words surprised her. “It’s a huge hug from the Legislature,” he said of the graduation ceremony that will take place in mid-September at the San Telmo market itself.

So that CoffeeAs Analía calls it, located in the strategic center of the market, under the dome, customers have returned. Has the pandemic changed your coffee drinking habits? He says no, that people have come back to retrieve these rituals that quarantine forced to adapt inside.

But what has changed is that somehow the café has gained more public space: takeaway sales have been promoted, particularly among young customers, who pass by, buy their coffee and drink it in the open air, in the nearby Parque Lezama or Puerto Madero.

Specialty coffee

Like reading countless books – she says she can’t calculate how many books on coffee she has in her personal library – Analía has been able to tell the story of this drink since time immemorial, she can too tell firsthand the recent history of the coffee and coffee shop boom which has been experienced in the country, and in particular in Buenos Aires, over the past decade.

“When we started, there was no specialty coffee. We have set up the Coffee Study Center both to train the coffee grower and to train the consumer. The Coffee It was born later, as a necessity of the students at the school, who took cupping lessons and asked ‘Where do we have these coffees?’ “.

Today, in Coffee Town, they have a menu with 25 varieties of coffee from very different origins, and in all cases the traceability of this product is recorded. Alvarez sources directly from small producers, whom he has met during all these years of travel.

“On each trip, I learned to roast, to taste, to cultivate. The tasters are very capos in their cafes, but not on a global level. This is why I ended up doing the final training in the United States and Canada, which, not being producers, have the possibility of importing from all over the world, ”he explains. In 2010, he obtained his first international diploma as a coffee sensory judge and later became Q Grader by obtaining the highest qualification from the Coffee Quality Institute.

In the presentation, the expert warns: that today there are many gourmet cafes on offer, that not necessarily specialty coffee. “Specialty coffee refers to the quality of the bean, more than 80 tasting points. It’s a bit difficult, and these are expensive coffees. There aren’t really that many specialty cafes. In the face of consumer ignorance, it is very easy for marketing to be used to promote something that is not what it says it is, ”he says.

Analía thinks that during these years the consumer has learned a lot (“Before, we had to explain what barista meant”), but admits that the world of coffee is complex, even more than that of wine, because of the amount of aromas and flavors that come together in a cup.

Educate the consumer

For this reason, as in its beginnings, its idea continues to be “to educate the consumer, because he is the only one who can define if what he takes is good or not, and whether what you pay is tied or not. He can only do it by knowing: otherwise, they will make a fuss for him ”.

And the capsule? What do you think of the other “coffee explosion” of this decade? “The capsules are in the 21st century what the moment was in the 20th century: practicality. It has nothing to do with the quality of what’s inside. You don’t know what the bean is, or how it’s roasted, or how long it’s been there, ”she says emphatically, before giving some basic tips on how to choose a good coffee.

“The origin does not determine the quality. You can find bad, very good or specialty coffees everywhere. In Ethiopia you can have great coffees and horrible coffees because of the way they were treated. The quality of coffee depends on the crop, altitude, soil and what the man does with this coffeeHe remarks.

When the coffee is of poor quality, it has flavor and astringency defects, “a very deep bitterness, it gets stuck in the throat for lack of sweetness. Quality coffee is balanced in its components: it has as much acidity as it has sweetness. When this balance is found, it is creamy in the mouth, it has a pronounced durability and soft, pleasant, that it is not necessary to add sugar ”.

According to Alvarez, the next step in consumer education is communication on the production side. “Sustainable coffee: why is it important and what does it mean, the money you pay as a consumer to which chain in the world does it go … whether to one of the big companies multinationals or to a much shorter one from a small producer or cooperative. Think about where I position myself as a consumer. Because without a consumer, there is no producer», Concludes the coffee judge.

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