California was definitely a tricky state when it came to the project, because there are dozens upon dozens of quality roasters within its borders. How do you narrow that down to a single one? As it happens, I couldn't even do that, although for reasons other than you might suspect. The point of the project was to sample coffee roasted in each state - aside from Hawaii, coffee isn't grown in the United States, so of course I wasn't going to be sampling coffee FROM each state.
As it turns out, however, there is a project underway to grow coffee in California! The company is called Frinj Coffee and it operates out of Goleta, a seaside town just west of Santa Barbara. A number of farms in southern California have been planting coffee and starting to cultivate it, and Frinj has been organizing and roasting that coffee. I resisted for a little while... but ultimately sampling a new and still pretty rare origin was far too tempting.
The main reason I resisted was the price point, which we probably need to discuss up front. Frinj sells California-grown coffee for the low low price of $75 for a five-ounce bag - which, when you use the brewing ratio I do, generates about six 12-ounce cups of coffee (volumetrically, a "tall" at Starbucks). In other words, $12.50 a cup - not the most affordable thing going. Even if I were only buying coffee for myself, at those prices I would be spending $375 a month on coffee, which even for me is a bit much. When I was discussing this with my dad, he noted that charging exorbitant prices seems like it might be an issue for a nascent industry; this is possibly true, but given the prices paid for some Geisha coffees out of Central America, maybe not. It's supply and demand to a large extent - there still is not a lot of this coffee, and the kind of people who are interested in getting in on the ground floor of a new growing region are probably willing to pay a premium price to get to try it first. Think about how much new electronics tend to cost versus what you can get them for if you're willing to wait a couple years. In any event, Frinj doesn't seem to be having that much trouble selling what it's producing so far.
The good news is the coffee tastes really good, or anyway the one I bought did. The big concern is you drop $75 on a bag of coffee (even a standard 12-ounce bag would make me wince at that price) and then you don't even like it that much, but the Rancho Filoso Estate Blend that I went with was some of the most purely drinkable coffee I've had recently. Not super acidic (not shocking since it's not grown at high altitude), good body, nice spice notes and some natural sweetness. I believe this blend was composed almost entirely of the Caturra Rojo varietal, possibly entirely; the notes mentioned that there were some Geisha trees on the farm but it wasn't clear if they had matured enough to be included. Either way, the card that came with the coffee stated that this was the first harvest from Rancho Filoso - if the first harvest tastes that good, I can only imagine what it might taste like in five years when they're old hands at the crop! California seems like it might be a growing region to watch, and the 2020 harvest is getting underway, so there will be more to try soon. Maybe in a few months I can talk myself into another $75 bag...
Stay tuned for part two, where I discuss the two single origins I got from Santa Cruz-based roasters Verve Coffee.
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