The Jedi masters of coffee

How many cups of coffee do you have a day? Four? Five? Eight? Fifteen? Twenty?

That’s nothing. Patty Romaine-Moody samples over 1,000.

She does it for Starbucks, where she’s Seattle’s Coffee Quality Specialist. Granted, she spits out most of the coffee after she’s swirled it around her mouth  much as wine tasters sip, swirl and spit  but it’s kind of amazing that Starbucks has such a specialist in its midst. “My job is to make sure that Starbucks House Blend tastes the same in Taiwan, Singapore, Seattle or Paris,” she explained to a crowd gathered in the W Hotel in Taipei.

We were there for what Starbucks calls its “Coffee College”  a special two-day training session Starbucks holds yearly for its partners (meaning its employees, who technically own shares in the company) in order to inculcate the Jedi art of brewing the perfect cup of coffee. Yes, the Star Wars connection: it took a while, but it eventually clicked for me.

Coffee break: Media guests of Starbucks Asia-Pacific Coffee College at Shangri-La Taipei after the aroma lab.

This year the session was held in Taipei, where Starbucks now has 203 branches, making it the second largest Asia-Pacific market (behind Seoul and right ahead of the Philippines). Starbucks had sent over Patty, who can sample a multitude of brews and still retain her ability to distinguish flavor notes and roasting characteristics without jittering like a jazzed-up Chihuahua.

Patty’s culinary background has prepared her to sniff, slurp and spit out teaspoon after teaspoon of fresh-brewed Starbucks roasts, and this gives her special powers of detection and heightened awareness. Much like a Jedi master.

In fact, we learned that Starbucks has a system of ranking its padawans that even George Lucas would appreciate: entry-level baristas are given green aprons (as we all know from visiting the ubiquitous Starbucks outlets); the next level up are Coffee Masters, who receive black aprons. We met several cheery masters at the Starbucks Taiwan headquarters in downtown Taipei. They taught our assembled media group to pull lattes, whip up Frappuccinos, and marvel at their zen mastery of all things coffee-related. The next level beyond that is Coffee Ambassador, a title given to regional masters. Above that there’s Howard Schultz, I suppose.

What Patty sought to teach us was to recognize different notes in coffee and find language to describe it, much as one might learn to appreciate wine and speak a few words about it other than “red” or “white.”

Here’s the scoop: Patty Romaine-Moody, Starbucks Taiwan president John Hsu and a coffee master prepare to scoop beans during launch of “Willow” light blend coffee.

We began our tasting session at a table laden with various roasted coffee beans, which we handled. We learned how “cherries” are picked, how they grow on the vine, and how it feels to squeeze out the bean from its slippery “jacket”; we studied the different roasts, and then... we sampled some fresh coffee. The Coffee Masters presented us with cups of Willow (Starbucks’ new “light” blend that took two years and some 80 different roasts to perfect), a medium House Blend and a dark Espresso and had us “cup” each one  skimming the top for impurities with a spoon. Then we embarked on the “Four Steps of Coffee Tasting”:

• Smelling. While our tongue only recognizes four tastes  salty, sweet, bitter and sour  our noses recognize literally thousands.

 • Slurping. This is done extremely loudly, and at times the room sounded like a Chinese noodle house at lunchtime as dozens of eager coffee padawans slurped up spoonfuls of brew. The idea is to spray the coffee across your tongue, but also to draw in oxygen all the way up to the sinuses, thus enhancing flavor. (Patty was almost scarily good at this.)

Higher education: Green aprons like this one worn by the author are the lowest rung on the Starbucks ladder to Jedi coffee mastery.

• Locating. You are meant to think about where you experience coffee flavor  at the tip of the tongue? at the sides of the mouth? What is the overall “mouthfeel,” as the jargon goes?

• Describing. This can be very subjective, putting words and images to the aroma, acidity, body and flavor. Patty invited participants to “tell a story” about where the coffee takes you  say, reading a book in a cozy room on a sunny afternoon. But, try as I might  and no matter how much coffee I consumed  I personally did not hallucinate.

Patty and the Starbucks staff also walked us through the “coffee journey” from crop to cup and the global business of coffee. It’s good that Asia is coming into its own as a producer  even China is getting in on the action, ramping up production in a region once dominated by India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines. It’s also good that Starbucks makes a personal investment in its growers  after all, Seattle produces no beans, and they have to sustain ties with hundreds of suppliers around the world. While growing beans is literally the bottom of the supply chain, Starbucks outlined its fair trade efforts: monitoring receipts at the farmer-buyer level through its Care and Farmer Equity (CAFE) process to ensure farmers get paid the right amount, improving villages by building schools and medical clinics. Yes, Starbucks is very serious about fair trade and ethical practices.

Still, coffee is a “luxury item,” as Coffee Master Charles Ho (yes, it says this on his card) pointed out. Farmers rarely see the “finished product”  a bag of roasted beans  and they’re unlikely to ever afford a cup of Starbucks coffee, unlike say corn or rice, which they buy on a regular basis. All the more reason that Starbucks sees an ethical responsibility to do the right thing. In some poorer places  like Huay Som Poi in Chiang Mai  the company actually makes a unique five-percent direct investment in the village to fund schools and clinics. Other markets have other mechanisms  NGOs, direct loans, donations  to spread the green around.

Our journey next took us outside the tasting room to Taipei’s many Starbucks branches. There, Alice Chen, Starbucks store development director, showed us the Neihu Minquan store which is LEEDS (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified; we saw the unique Shida Yunhe store near the university belt that takes donations of travel and F&B books for its downstairs reading library; there’s the Chongqing Road store which occupies a remodeled 1930s building and features vintage photos from the Guanxa Era and even a small music stage/moviehouse on the third floor; then there’s the Long Men store which offers a tea service. According to Chen, Taipei’s Starbucks branches retain the ambience of their surroundings: “Location really adds a dynamic energy to each store.”

This is something Patty can understand: she gets up-close and personal with her brews. She can distinguish bitterness from acidity  acidity is actually a “lively, palate-cleansing” quality, experienced on the sides of the tongue, a factor related to growing elevation, while bitterness usually means the coffee’s over-roasted or just burnt  and she talks a lot about the “body” of coffee as it’s experienced by the mouth.

I asked Patty how she could sample so many brews every day and still taste the difference. “I learned from sensory training courses that as long as you don’t burn your tongue, it’s really more a matter of mental exhaustion,” she explained. “So you need to drink some water, take a break after a while, do something else, then come back to it.”

And when did she first learn she had special tasting powers? “I’m not sure there was one experience, but I do remember as a kid, I was always the first in my family to recognize smells when we would go into a room  good smells and bad smells.”

Ah, yes. The Force is strong in this one, padawan.

Red, white, or espresso?

Starbucks upped the ante on our Coffee College trip, inviting us to a special wine-coffee pairing dinner at restaurant Villa 32 in the mountainous hot springs area

of Beitou on our last night. There, our minds were further blown by a menu that included seven courses: next to each entrée was a demitasse of Starbucks specially selected by Patty to go with the food, and next to that was a sommelier-selected wine for each main course.

Can you say heaven?

We opened with Starbucks House Blend and buffalo mozzarella with fresh tomatoes and basil; next was a Guatemala Antigua blend with pan-fried Hokkaido sea scallops, served with a white wine; we ate and drank our way through cream of taro bisque with champaignon and coffee foam; tucked into Sumatra coffee and risotto with sweet potato from Chushan flavored with anise; our eyes rolled back at the Veranda Blend and steam fillet of blue parrot fish with coffee caviar (!!); our palates were cleansed by the Willow Blend with cream cheese and citrus mousse; and our mouths watered again at the Caffe Verona and sous-vide spring chicken with duck liver chantilly; finally, after six or so glasses of wine and enough coffee to keep us awake for a month, we enjoyed the homemade vanilla ice cream sprinkled with Starbucks VIA Italian Roast for that extra crunch.

This might become a habit.