This Milenio lot from forward-thinking producers Fernando Altmann and Angie Gutiérrez shows the inherent quality that can be found in F1 hybrid coffees, a promising sign that coffee could yet survive the challenges it faces - if we place market value both in modern hybrids (as displayed with this lot) and regenerative farming.

• Best Brewed with: Filter
• Light Roaster Influence:
  Despite a processing style that would seemingly indicate lots of heavy funk character, this lot presents closer to an ultra-clean washed both in roasting and brewing. As such we’ve profiled to emphasise the bright, juicy acidity that drew us to this coffee in the first place.
• Best rested for: 3 weeks
• For Filter: 60g/L & 96°C seems to suit this coffee well, but you can push it a bit more. 99°C if the acidity presents as overly tart.
• For Espresso: 18g to 48g, 25-30s - pulling longer shots to balance acidity and emphasise citrus & florals.
• We’re tasting: Juicy navel orange zest aroma, in the cup bergamot, tinned mandarin and black tea present front and centre alongside redcurrant and apple. As it cools, white floral notes & a pistachio crème finish add nuanced complexity. Great sweetness.

The Story

Fernando Altmann and Angie Gutiérrez own Gaia Artisan Coffees, a collection of 3 farms (Finca Sebastian, Los Robles, & Hacienda Shefa Barajah) alongside a wet mill, nursery, & roastery. The interesting thing about Finca Sebastian is that Fernando & Angie have planted only F1 hybrids in this farm, an experimental test bed for the future of coffee.

Coffee faces multiple crises - a non-hardy plant, arabica only thrives within specific temperature ranges that tend to be found inside a short band around the equator, requiring both a wet and dry season to flower. Killed by frost, stressed by overly hot weather, doing best when there is cooler nighttime temperatures and hotter daytime. It’s an incredibly specific niche that evolved in the moist Afromontane forests of Ethiopia, then exported by human hands (mostly through colonialism) across the globe, anywhere inside the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn that would support them.

Coffee faces multiple crises - a non-hardy plant, arabica only thrives within specific temperature ranges that tend to be found inside a short band around the equator, requiring both a wet and dry season to flower. Killed by frost, stressed by overly hot weather, doing best when there are cooler nighttime temperatures and hotter daytime. It’s an incredibly specific niche that evolved in the moist Afromontane forests of Ethiopia, then exported by human hands (mostly through colonialism) across the globe, anywhere inside the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn that would support them.

The problem then becomes - with coffee requiring distinct and niche conditions, the great global geoengineering exercise we’re undertaking, releasing gigatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is severely disrupting the climactic conditions required for coffee. Already this year, heatwaves and droughts across key coffee-growing regions has caused supply crunches throughout the coffee-producing world. Our final crisis is disease - a genetic bottleneck left by the small number of varieties exported during the colonial spread of coffee has both devastated old growth plantations through disease, a fate left even more likely as the plants are stressed by the weather.

Coffee is an under-researched crop - the same resources large agri-business can deploy towards crops grown in the global north just do not exist for coffee, a crop that is mostly grown in developing nations in the global south, oft by smallholders as a cash crop.

While local breeding efforts exist, they oft focus on yields (to increase both smallholder and national incomes) or purely disease resilience, combined with interventions like removing shade trees and using more agrichemical inputs to increase yields.

Coffee is an under-researched crop - the same resources large agri-businesses can deploy towards crops grown in the Global North just do not exist for coffee, a crop that is mostly grown in developing nations in the Global South, often by smallholders as a cash crop.

While local breeding efforts exist, they often focus on yields (to increase both smallholder and national incomes) or purely disease resilience, combined with interventions like removing shade trees and using more agrichemical inputs to increase yields.

Recognising the cliff edge we face in coffee production, there has been a steady and increasing urgency to breed genetically resilient coffee varieties. These hybrids cross genetically distinct varieties (typically one natural hybrid (a cross of the hardy robusta species with arabica that occurred in Timor Leste) with coffee that is as close to the wild landraces of the Ethiopian forests. These first-generation hybrids (F1) possess an interesting biological quirk - hybrid vigour. Growing stronger, faster, yielding higher, and showing more resilience to a wider range of climactic conditions and disease.

Recognising the cliff edge we face in coffee production, there has been a steady and increasing urgency to breed genetically resilient coffee varieties. These hybrids cross genetically distinct varieties (typically one natural hybrid (a cross of the hardy robusta species with arabica that occurred in Timor-Leste) with coffee that is as close to the wild landraces of the Ethiopian forests). These first-generation hybrids (F1) possess an interesting biological quirk - hybrid vigour. Growing stronger, faster, yielding higher, and showing more resilience to a wider range of climactic conditions and disease.

All that glitters is not gold, however - this hybrid vigour is lost after the next round of breeding, with F2 generations onwards showing a mixture of traits from both the male and female plants. To overcome this, plants must be cloned from leaf cuttings - a significant barrier to access requiring sterile lab work and an increase in cost per final seedling, compared to purchasing from a nursery or planting from seed.

F1 hybrids are one front of the fight to keep coffee alive - they represent an immediate hope (improved varieties that still show great quality when other varieties might suffer/die - some F1s have even shown mild frost tolerance) with some drawbacks (monocultures via cloning leave them exposed to eventual disease adaptation, increased yields demand increased nutrient supply). We need new varieties, new species, and a value in farming that regenerates the land. These things will come at a higher cost - the moving of negative externalities from producers to us at the consuming end of the market. If we don’t pay that cost, we’ll accrue a debt that when it comes to be paid, might leave us with no coffee left to speak of.