Move over, arabica. It’s robusta’s time to shine.
A bean considered so bitter that one country outlawed its cultivation is gaining popularity thanks to price-conscious consumers in developed coffee markets like in Europe and the U.S. and emerging ones like Brazil and Russia. Robusta prices are rallying as a result.
But robusta rarely gets much respect. Choosy coffee drinkers have long scoffed at the variety, preferring instead arabica coffee, which is still accounts the majority of world production and consumption. While robusta is higher-yielding, more disease-resistant (it’s robust, if you will), the taste is extremely harsh, especially compared with arabica, experts say.
“Robusta beans are not typically, let’s say, fine coffees,” says Andrea Illy, chief executive of illycaffè. Its taste “is for sure less refined compared to arabica at least for what we are seeking.”
Costa Rica, famed for its gourmet beans that are handpicked from steep, verdant slopes, banned the cultivation of robusta coffee in 1989 “because of its inferior quality,” and authorized the government to destroy existing robusta trees. In 2010, coffee growers in neighboring Nicaragua took to the streets demanding a similar law against robusta, but they were not successful.
The aversion to robusta among coffee aficionados is strong. At Toby’s Estate Coffee, a specialty coffee roaster and cafe in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the label on a $14.95 bag of Kenyan single-farm coffee touts flavors of “black tea, peach pie, with a white grape finish.” But “for transparency’s sake” the company lists the other varietals grown on that farm since one has trace amounts of robusta in its genes.
As tough as it may be to swallow, robusta’s future is brightening up. Robusta-coffee futures, traded on NYSE Liffe, are up 13% on the year. Arabica coffee on ICE Futures U.S., on the other hand, are down 36%.
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2013/02/08/robustas-moment-in-the-sun/?mod=WSJBlog