1. A geography of taste: fair trade coffee and spatialized tag clouds
Frank Lafone, Bradley Wilson, Trevor Harris
Department of Geology and Geography
West Virginia University

2. Taste and place
Taste is subjective, personal, complex – yet taste is used to determine coffee quality and thus price
Important in rise of Fair Trade Coffee
Cup of excellence competition
New science of coffee quality
Codified by Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA)
Professional coffee quality evaluators
Combine subjective and objective sensory techniques
Identify unique flavor profiles of coffee from around the world

3. Competitions held in each coffee growing country
Back link coffee flavor evaluation from cup to crop
Relationships between flavor, varietals, soils, climate, and farm practices

4. Spatial analysis of Alliance for Coffee Excellence quality competitions Central America 2003-2009.
Explore spatial analysis of coffee taste
Link evaluations to regional geographic location (terroir)
Challenge to link textual descriptions of flavor to the geography of coffee production and Fair Trade

5. Coffee Cuppers Handbook of Cupping Taste Flavor Wheel various wheels

6. Database 2003-2009 Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala
Farm name, farm size (coffee growing size), farmer name, altitude, whether certified (1-4 incl free trade)
City, region, country
Coffee variety, processing method (washed and sun dried, wet processing, conventional)
Competition data
# of bags/boxes submitted
End taste score obtained in competition (process is proprietary)
Range
Winners must get above 80 to qualify for competition)
Coffees are ranked 1-n by country by year based on score
Winning buyers and final bid price for each year of competition (standardized to 2003 $)
Jury flavor and aroma descriptors
Citrus, creamy, mellow, complex, chocolate, sweet, floral, melon, butterscotch, rich, orange, carrot, jasmine, honey, spicy, syrupy, locorice

7. Number of farms ranked above 80%
Honduras
Costa Rica
Nicaragua
Guatemala
El Salvador
2003 37 31
2004 21 28 35
2005 41 17
2006 33 25 18 23
2007 24 34 19
2008 26 30 36
2009 39

8. ESDA analysis Brushing and linking – bivariate graphs Explored
Altitude, farm size, lot size, coffee growing area, altitude
No meaningful influence on price or score
Only meaningful relationship was rank and price

9. Distributions
Environmental Variables
Competition Variables

10. Scatterplots of Environmental Variables to Score and Price

11. All farms ranked above 80% score for all years plotted against price003 Dollars by Rank
Clear relationship
Variability
Outliers
Question – what flavors
drive the higher ranking
and therefore price
Flavor descriptors
Text
Qualitative spatial analysis
Qualitative GIS

12. Wordles

13. Wordle for all ranked all countries coffee flavors for 2003 and 2009

14. What distinguishes flavors for higher ranked coffee from lower ranked?
Wordles for price by rank into 5 categories
Natural breaks in the data
Ranks 1, 2-5, 6-12, 13-25, 26+ (for all years?)

15. Wordle of Rank 1 Winners – all countries - all years

16. Wordle of Ranks 2-10 Winners

17. Wordle of Ranks 11 and above Winners

18. See differences between Group 1 vs group 26+
Group one emphasized over Group 5
Smooth
Fruity
Complex
Aroma
Group five emphasized chocolate, balanced – round, solid, clean, Spicy

19. Link the descriptors to the farms to the regional maps
Spatial clustering
Spatialized tag clouds

20. Conclusion Qualitative GIS informs analysis
Text – descriptors, wordles, maps
Exploratory
Critique
Future work – tea, terroir, wine, spatial humanities