October 2023 Playlist: Sourcing Suite

Cio da Terra: The Cycle

“The earth in heat.” This beautiful song from Chico Buarque, sung by Milton Nascimento, beautifully describes the cycles of nature, and how humankind extracts from it.

Threshing the wheat
Gathering each berry of wheat
Forging the miracle of bread from the wheat
To get enough bread
Stripping the sugar cane
Gathering the sugarcane's juice…

Coffee “beans” are seeds that grow in the coffee fruit on the coffee tree, which blossoms once a year here in Brazil. Centuries ago, someone discovered that roasting that seed and pouring near-boiling water over it produced one of the most beautiful beverages in the history of the world, a luxury that many of us participate in daily.

Expresso 2222: The Sourcing
This Gilberto Gil classic song from the 1972 album of the same name was inspired by a train in Itauçu, Bahia, the town where Gil spent a good part of his childhood. While most of our sourcing travel these days is by car, bus, and plane, this song captures the spirit and the excitement that goes with discovering the trip: meeting good friends and exploring and evaluating with them their coffees from this harvest. (Here is a link to a wonderful online article that explores the influence of the accordion on Gilberto Gil’s music, including the intro to Expresso 2222.)

Tem Quem Queira: The Choosing
“If you don’t want it, someone else will take it” sings Rita Benneditto. This smooth but uplifting song describes the sentiment of many growers this time of year. As buyers, we must quickly decide, choosing what we feel are the best coffees and the ones that best fit our blends. If we take too long, our coffee-growing partners will miss out on the opportunity to offer their coffees to other potential buyers since they are holding on to the coffees while we make our decisions. After all, “If you don’t want it, someone else will take it.”

O Mar: The Journey
This classic by Dorival Caymmi is a tribute to the sea. Exporting entails preparing (stuffing, they call it) the container, filling out reams of paperwork, shipping the coffee to the port of Santos, booking maritime freight to Houston, unloading the coffee in Houston, and then bringing it via overland freight to Austin where it will be roasted fresh to order.

Batuque na Cozinha: The Transformation
The plant and the grower work their magic by creating (and maintaining) roast precursors in the bean. It is now our job to achieve the potential of the coffee’s flavor by transforming these precursors into the coffee’s flavors in the roast. As the coffee rolls around the drum, it moves and pops, creating its own batuque na cozinha—music jam session in the kitchen—as it transforms from a tasteless green seed into the roasted bean we all love.

Você: The Moment
This love song from Tim Maia captures the moment of having all of the above come to fruition and experiencing it all in a sip of incredible coffee.

You
Are more than I know
It's more than I thought
It's more than I expected,

You
You're something else
You're everything to me
It's just like I dreamed