It’s a floor wax. No, it’s a dessert topping. No, it’s a barista.
Posted by TheShot on 11 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: Barista
If there ever was a news article that embodied what we’ve found unsatisfying about how barista competitions are promoted, this one from today’s News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) is up there: More than another cup of joe | TheNewsTribune.com | Tacoma, WA.
Over the weekend, Tacoma hosted the Northwest Regional Barista Competition. Barista competitions may be old hat for many of us, so we have to respect efforts to simplify things for a layman audience. As much as barista competitions bring out an industry tension between keep-it-to-ourselves insiders and those with a desire for mass public appeal, public awareness and recognition are two primary goals of these events. Therefore Barista Competition 101 introductory information is critical for the public to understand why coffee professionals do all of this in the first place.
Jay Lijewski, the coffee program developer for Dillanos Coffee Roasters (the main sponsor of the event), lands two barista competition quotes in the article. In the first quote, Mr. Lijewski states, “It’s almost like an Iron Chef for coffee.” But in his very next quote, two lines later in the piece, he states, “We’re trying to elevate the name barista, to make it something like a sommelier.”
Individually, each (albeit flawed) example is backed by semi-accurate elements of truth. But combined, Mr. Lijewski offers a bad case of mixed metaphors. A mistake like this may seem innocuous, but it’s not just Mr. Lijewski. Both of his quotes are akin to industry platitudes. Which underscores just how confused even the coffee industry is on how to represent the barista and the role they play to the lay public. If the industry can’t even articulate it right, how can anyone expect the public to do that?
“It’s like wine.” “It’s like Iron Chef.” Each are examples of uncreative ways which we define coffee and baristas by what they are not, rather than by what they are. Some degree of analogy may be necessary to explain the basic concepts, but we’re not going to educate anyone by simply coming up with more and more inconsistent ways to confuse them.
4 Comments »
But what is a barista then?
Baristas educate themselves about coffee, familiarizes themselves with specific coffees, and should be able to explain and present the coffees to their customers… like a sommelier, no?
BUT
A sommelier doesn’t MAKE wine. Doesn’t PREPARE the wine. Sure, proper storage and knowledge of how to best appreciate the wine… but…
A barista takes whole bean coffee and other ingredients (water, milk, etc.) and with tools like grinders, brewers, espresso machines, etc., prepares and combines the ingredients with skill. Not unlike a chef.
I get your point, but then how would you address the issue then? You didn’t supply your solution to the problem that you identified.
Cheers, Nick.
The sommelier
The sommelier comparison only works by extension of all the wine analogies. Sure, there’s a lot to learning about terroir and learning about what makes a good coffee behave badly. But there’s a lot that doesn’t work about the comparison.
As much as there’s been talk about a barista assisting an uninformed customer on how to zero in on their own tastes, that’s almost never done in practice. This is perhaps the #1 consumer role of a sommelier. Granted, many coffee shops aren’t logistically set up to overwhelm customers with coffee varietals. And even if they are, it’s far more likely in front of a Clover rather than in front of a barista-competition-regulation La Marzocco.
The chef
A better analogy is what you pointed out: that baristas are more like chefs. Coffee preparation is cooking, really: ingredients, equipment, skill, time, temperature, pressure, etc. And yet the only time that you publicly see the industry comparing baristas to chefs is when they’re describing barista competitions as a sort of Iron Chef. Not only does the public miss out on a better explanation of the barista. An opportunity is lost to more broadly educate the public — to think more of coffee in its many cooking-related contexts.
Even so, I’m still surprised at how downright intimidated the industry is at publicly explaining its craft. Analogies are a crutch, and one of their great problems is that they set you up for external standards that you can never measure up to.
The … coffee
Single malt scotch, loose leaf tea, microbrewed beer — none of these depended on a web of analogies to gain public acceptance and appreciation for the details of the craft (and, to an extent, who crafts them). Then you look at how ubiquitous coffee is by comparison, and I wonder why are we are always making it out to be wine.
Why are we relying on modern wine tasting analogies when coffee has a rich and almost unrivaled unique cultural history in coffee ceremonies, such as the bunna in Ethiopia and Eritrea? Sure, it’s a crude ceremony for quality coffee — but how about the ceremonies in places like Scandinavia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Japanese coffeehouses, etc.? The industry is essentially turning its back on some of the beverage’s greatest cultural assets.
In short, I think coffee should be strong enough to stand on its own – without relying on the crutches of analogies. Give coffee consumers some credit to figure it out without all the extra crutches that could get in the way.
Two quick points. First, coffee is different – unique – in that it has two craftspeople in addition to myriad farmers, processors, etc. For liquor or wine there are the brewers, vintners, etc. who prepare the beverage and bottle it. The product is then done. These people, in my mind are akin to the roaster. But then, with coffee, you have to have the barista – an extra layer. I’m not sure where all this is going, but I think it’s headed in the direction of pointing out the complicated, and unique nature of coffee, supporting your point, Greg, that it’s not simply a matter of riding the coattails of other beverages. At the same time, I don’t think the analogies are completely pointless as long as they are suggestive AND then someone goes on to explain their limitations – like people tend to not be doing.
That said, Intelligentsia’s new Venice cafe “promises” something closer to an actual sommelier – something akin to what we had at the Slow Food Nation event – a barista who can explain/inform/recommend coffees. I’m curious how this will work out in practice.
[...] controversy about what these competitive events are meant to convey to a coffee drinking public. Some have made the case that even those within the coffee world might itself not be entirely clear about [...]