Coffee is the sole income source for many farmers, and a new project by Onyx Coffee Lab called TERROIR encourages farmers to diversify their crops and creates a market for new products.
It’s no secret that global climate change is affecting crops all over the world, with coffee farmers not immune. While visiting coffee farms in Colombia, Jon Allen, the green coffee buyer for Onyx Coffee Lab, noticed the creativity and resourcefulness of one producer in particular. Alfonso Pillimue had ripped up the coffee plants growing in lower-elevation portions of his farmland and replanted the area with cacao trees. Pillimue shared that climate change had affected the coffee plant’s ability to grow at lower elevations, but that the cacao was growing well in its new environment. This sparked an idea for Allen, one that would eventually grow into what is now Onyx Coffee Lab’s newest project, ‘TERROIR’.
The project’s name is based around the definition of terroir: “the complete natural environment in which a product is produced, including factors such as soil, topography and climate.” Inspired in part by a desire to showcase the “flavors of the land” through sourcing multiple agricultural products from one farm, Allen began conversations with coffee producers in his network about sourcing alternative products from their farms in addition to the coffee Onyx was already purchasing.
“TERROIR is a great opportunity, for them [coffee farmers] and for us, to make something cool…we wanted to practice more of what we preach…partnership, sustainability,” Allen said, “We [at Onyx] asked ourselves, ‘How can we help farmers diversify their crops and…create a whole new market of income for these people?”
Inspired by Alfonso’s farming ingenuity, Onyx Coffee joined forces with Arkansas-based KYYA Chocolate to create the first product in their TERROIR line: coffee chocolate. Sourcing cacao and coffee beans from the same farms, the roasters sought to highlight the “common ground” between coffee and chocolate in a single tasty package.
“Learning about the similarities between coffee and chocolate really stretched us,” said Allen. “Putting them together was more challenging than we expected. We had to focus on the mouthfeel of the coffee so instead of cupping, we’d eat the beans to see how the roast profile would change the texture of the beans.”
Onyx isn’t interested in merely curating a line of chocolate bars, but in using the TERROIR project as both a creative endeavor and a means to create more consistent income for coffee producers. “We’re not an NGO, but we do want our friends and these communities to succeed. We’ve got a lot of directions we want to take this,” and Allen went on to mention future TERROIR projects involving coffee blossom honey, coffee blossom tea and coffee cherry tea, among others.
However, Allen was quick to note, “We’re not big enough to directly trade every product in large volumes…we’re working towards that and hoping that a more sustainable transaction will be creating new product lines, revenue and cash flow [for everyone involved with TERROIR].”
Coffee chocolate can be purchased wholesale on the Onyx Coffee Lab website.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diana Mnatsakanyan is a cat-lady-turned-barista living in Charlotte, North Carolina. A workaholic and coffee nerd, she is currently in the process of opening her first coffee shop, Undercurrent Coffee. She also dabbles in barista blogging, coffee consulting and Netflix binge-watching (she highly recommends Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and 30 Rock).
