STiR coffee and tea magazine

14 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 5, 2020 (October / November) Q&A Q A By Kim Westerman STiR: You wear many hats in the coffee industry. Which one is your favorite? Boot: My preferred activities focus on the livelihoods of coffee farmers in countries like Colombia, Ethiopia, and El Salvador. I truly enjoy the creation of innovative coffee development concepts that improve quality and increase the income of coffee-farming families. STiR: What captivates you most about coffee? Boot: Tasting and savoring it. The flavor of coffee can be so overwhelm- ingly rich and astoundingly mesmerizing. The impact of the variety and, in general, of the terroir on the flavor profile is an aspect I find highly intriguing. STiR: Tell us about owning coffee farms in Panama. Why did you choose this growing region as the place to plant coffee trees? Boot: My brother and I started procuring Panamanian single-producer specialty coffee lots for our roasting business in the Netherlands back in the 1990s. At that time, I already realized that Panama coffee was like a diamond in the rough. I was a judge in the legendary 2004 Best of Panama competition, which featured geisha coffee produced by the Peterson family for the very first time. I fell in love with the flavor of geisha and ultimately decided to become a geisha producer myself. This year, after many years of hard work, we won top awards at the Best of Panama competition. Our best geisha lot, Finca Sophia washed geisha, received an average rating of 95 points. STiR: Are you able to get down there now during the pandemic? Boot: No, I haven't been able to visit Panama during the pandemic and it breaks my heart. Fortunately, we have an excellent team of farm employees who are truly dedicated to their work and to our joint mission to produce stellar quality coffee lots on our coffee farms, Finca La Mula and Finca Sophia, and on our newest farm, Finca La Cabra, which is named after the Spanish word for "goat." STiR: Congratulations on this year's BOP showing! What do you think was special about this year's crop? Boot: Our coffee lots from Finca Sophia won first place (washed geisha category) and second place (natural geisha category). At an average elevation of 2000 meters, Finca Sophia is one of the highest coffee farms in Central America and during the past years, we invested abundant resources in the health of the soils and the overall biodiversity of the farm's ecosystem. This year's crop was a reflection of that effort. We also won seventh place with a washed coffee lot from Finca La Mula, which has been the result of careful processing, specifically innovative drying practices. STiR: What are the biggest challenges facing the coffee industry now, from your perspective, and what are the most pressing actions we can take to address those challenges? Boot: The major challenge is greed. Millions of coffee-farming families across the globe continue to live in poverty. It's a bitter and harsh reality given the fact that the proliferation of specialty coffee has created immense wealth among a select group of roasters, traders, and brokers around the world. I truly cannot compre- hend why a significant part of the specialty coffee community has become desensitized to the needs of coffee-farming families. Heartbreaking. What's up with that? The second major challenge is caused by climate change and by the inability of coffee farmers to deal with its devastating impact. STiR: Tell us about Coffee for Peace. What is this organization's mission, and how did it come about? Boot: Four years ago, we received an invitation by the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) to prepare a comprehensive proposal for the revitalization of the coffee sector in Colombia's prolific conflict zones. This all happened during the aftermath of the peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the militias of the FARC guerilla. Our proposal was based on producer-focused quality improvement combined with innovative export facilitation of fully traceable coffee. We won the bid to execute this ambitious program and, right now, we're working with close to 20,000 coffee farming families in six different departments of Colombia. Most of the communi- ties where we work suffer from the impact of the coca- producing and -trafficking mafia. Coffee Willem Boot Willem Boot has worked in coffee since he was 14 years old — as a roaster and cupper, and then a roastery owner. In 1998, he founded Boot Coffee, a San Fran- cisco Bay Area consulting company whose mission was to advise roasting compa- nies and coffee producers on quality improvement strategies. Over the years, he developed an impressive portfolio of clients, from high-quality specialty startups to renowned coffee-producing countries. His passion is the geisha coffee farms he started in Panama and Ethiopia and his quest to find the mother-source of geisha in Ethiopia. He's also a licensed Q-grader and Q arabica instructor.

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