Is Starbucks Yirgacheffe Coffee Good? Flavor Characteristics of Yirgacheffe Coffee Beans

Starbucks' Yirgacheffe, what the name really means, and the trademark fight that changed Ethiopian coffee.

Starbucks Reserve: Sun-Dried Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Xueletuo Coffee Beans

Tmall price: 198 yuan per package.

Starbucks' Ethiopia Sun-Dried Yirgacheffe is processed naturally: hand-picked bright red cherries are laid out on raised drying beds, where they sit in the sun and are constantly turned to ensure even, complete drying. After drying, the fruit skin is removed, leaving Ethiopia Sun-Dried Yirgacheffe coffee beans rich in strawberry and red cherry fruit flavors.

Is Starbucks Yirgacheffe Good?

Starbucks' pour-over Yirgacheffe Xueletuo Sun-Dried is genuinely fragrant, better than the Yirgacheffe served at some small shops. It is not too acidic and it is truly aromatic, with a good aftertaste. The roasting workshop's technique shows, though the price of 88 makes drinking it a little painful.

Yirgacheffe

Yirgacheffe comes from Ethiopia in Africa, the continent's largest producer of Arabica coffee and the birthplace of the coffee tree. Its unique geography and microclimate create richly diverse, acidic coffee, making it a favorite of acidity lovers and a must-try basic from the African coffee regions.

Yirgacheffe is synonymous with Ethiopian specialty coffee. It should have been a sub-region of Sidamo, and its flavor is characterized by bright fruit acidity with notes of jasmine, lemon or lime, and berries. Drinking it fills the mouth with fruit and floral flavors, which is why it earns high marks in international specialty competitions; scores above 90 points from Coffee Review are common. It was once the subject of an international legal dispute with Starbucks, which used Yirgacheffe as a product name. The result was a settlement in which Starbucks paid royalties to Ethiopia, after which Yirgacheffe stood on its own and became the country's most famous coffee region.

Ethiopia's Victory Over the Green Giant: The Starbucks and Yirgacheffe Story

Ethiopia had worked with Brazil, the world's largest coffee-producing country, to share research on naturally low-caffeine coffee trees. Then, fighting for the rights of coffee farmers, it took on the world's largest coffee chain, Starbucks, accusing the company of appropriating Ethiopia's traditional origin names Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, and Harar. It demanded that Starbucks cancel the trademark registrations for these three place names, arguing that they belong to Ethiopia and can only be used with the country's consent and authorization.

The dispute erupted in March 2005 and once again drew international media attention.

What interested the media was the scale of the contrast. Ethiopia is the birthplace of Arabica coffee, and its coffee exports reached 170,000 metric tons in 2006, generating $431 million in foreign exchange, or 35% of the country's total exports. Among a population of 70 million, 15 million people depended on coffee for their livelihood. In 2006, Ethiopia's gross national product was only $9.78 billion, with per capita income of less than $900, making it one of the world's poorest countries.

Starbucks, by comparison, was a coffee chain giant with 12,440 stores globally in 2006. Its powerful legal team was most adept at suing competitors for infringing the green mermaid trademark, and its total revenue reached $7.78 billion, almost 80% of Ethiopia's gross national product. In 2006, Starbucks imported 150,000 metric tons of coffee beans from producing countries, about 50% of Ethiopia's coffee production of 300,000 metric tons that year. Yet Ethiopian coffee accounted for only 2% of Starbucks' coffee imports in 2006, since Starbucks focused mainly on Central and South American beans, following the historical trajectory of American coffee preferences. In the past, the world only heard about Starbucks suing others; now impoverished Ethiopia fought back against a company as rich as a country, using its own tactics against it.

Ethiopia played the sympathy card, and global media and humanitarian organizations almost unanimously sided with the weaker party. Ethiopia used Starbucks' best-selling "Shirkina Sun-Dried Sidamo" as an example to describe the hardships of coffee farmers.

In Fero village in the Sidamo producing region of southern Ethiopia, farmers must pick six pounds of coffee cherries to produce one pound of sun-dried beans, exposing them outdoors for fifteen days and turning them every few minutes to ensure even drying, which is back-breaking work. Yet farmers receive only $1.45 per pound of sun-dried beans, and from that sum they must deduct generator fuel costs, bank loans, wages, and the cost of transporting the beans down the mountain. What they actually pocket is less than $1. Starbucks, meanwhile, sold "Shirkina Sun-Dried Sidamo" at a high price of $26 per pound.

The international charity Oxfam visited Fero village in Ethiopia's Sidamo region and found farmers in ragged clothes with no shoes, living in makeshift houses of mud and thatch to shelter from wind and rain, surviving on the fruits and vegetables they grew themselves. The farmers' heartfelt sentiment was that they were furious about being exploited but had no one to complain to. Oxfam also did the math for the villagers: in 2006, 2,432 coffee farmers from Fero village produced a total of 300,000 pounds of sun-dried beans, with an average income of $123 per person. From that, each person had to pay $20 to coffee cooperatives and unions to support road construction and administrative costs, leaving only $103 per farmer to support a family of four for an entire year. Starbucks donated $15,000 that year to reward villagers for producing high-quality coffee, giving each farmer an additional $6.2, but this was a drop in the bucket. Oxfam pointed out that 45% of the final selling price of specialty coffee in Central and South America goes into coffee farmers' pockets, while Ethiopian farmers receive only 5%-10%, which is clearly too low.

Getachew Mengistie, director of Ethiopia's Intellectual Property Office, noted sharply that farmers sold green beans for $1.45 per pound while Starbucks sold them for $26 per pound in the United States, an eighteen-fold price difference. The reason, he argued, was that Ethiopia did not know how to use intellectual property rights to create value for farmers. Simply marketing Ethiopian specialty beans can sell them in the United States at three times the price of regular commercial beans. Investing in roasting, packaging, and marketing equipment downstream in the American supply chain cannot by itself create such enormous added value, because most of that value comes from the origin; without the "Sidamo" label, the coffee could not command such a price. He emphasized that Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and famous producing regions naturally carry enormous marketing value, but this had been overlooked by farmers, letting excess profits fall to countries that knew how to use origin prestige to create value.

Ethiopia finally awakened and decided to learn from Western countries how to master branding and value creation for the benefit of its farmers. In March 2005, it applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Office for trademark rights to the three famous producing regions: Sidamo, Yirgacheffe, and Harar. From then on, American businesses selling specialty coffee from these regions would have to obtain Ethiopia's authorization before using the origin names, allowing farmers to receive more reasonable compensation.

According to Oxfam's estimates, once Ethiopia obtained these three origin trademarks, its annual income would rise by $88 million, no small help. Starbucks objected to the US Trademark Office, since it had applied for Sidamo as a trademark as early as 2004. Although the case was still under review, the first applicant held an advantage. The Ethiopian ambassador to the United States negotiated with Starbucks and received the response: talk to our lawyers. In 2006, the US Trademark Office approved Ethiopia's ownership of the Yirgacheffe trademark, while the names Sidamo and Harar remained under review. Starbucks hired a large legal team to strengthen its defense, trying to prevent Ethiopia from controlling the trademark rights to the other two regions. In November 2006, Starbucks' newly appointed senior vice president Dub Hay posted a video on YouTube openly challenging Ethiopia, criticizing the application to trademark place names as illegal and suggesting that Ethiopian authorities adopt an origin certification system like those used for Jamaica Blue Mountain and Hawaii Kona, which also protect consumers. The video drew tens of thousands of views within a month but angered American media and humanitarian groups, who found Starbucks' behavior unseemly. Roberta Horton, the lawyer representing Ethiopia, responded that Dub Hay was talking nonsense, that Ethiopia's move aimed to protect high-value goods and consolidate the intellectual property rights it deserved, and that Ethiopia was simply adopting Starbucks' own strategy of protecting trademarks.

Mengistie, of Ethiopia's Intellectual Property Office, said the certification system Starbucks suggested was not feasible, because poor, illiterate coffee farmers did not have the capacity to carry out additional certification paperwork, and it would only add unnecessary regulation fees without raising the selling price, leaving farmers no better off. He added that Ethiopia's purpose in applying for trademark rights was to give farmers better income, so they could sleep on mattresses instead of the ground, have at least one meal a day, and send their children to school. American media widely criticized Starbucks, with some calling it modern colonial hegemony cleverly seizing Ethiopia's millennium-old heritage of quality coffee. Under strong public pressure, Dub Hay apologized publicly and retracted his statement that Ethiopia's trademark application was illegal.

In June 2007, the two-year trademark lawsuit came to an end. Starbucks acknowledged Ethiopia's ownership of the trademarks for Sidamo, Yirgacheffe, and Harar, agreed that Ethiopia would authorize the use of the origin trademarks, and also agreed to help Ethiopia market coffee from the three producing regions. In November, CEO Schultz personally visited the Ethiopian provincial government and donated funds to both parties.

To be fair, Starbucks' annual coffee imports of roughly 120,000-180,000 metric tons are modest compared with those of Procter and Gamble, Nestle, Sara Lee, and Kraft Foods, the world's four major coffee roasting giants, whose coffee divisions each earn more than $1 billion a year and whose combined purchases account for half of world production. Starbucks treats coffee farmers at least more generously than those four roasters. But it suffers from its fame, often becoming the target of criticism, and any misstep can easily lead to embarrassment. Some businesses benefited from the case: Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, a well-known company on the US East Coast, understood the unfair treatment of coffee farmers better than most, and in 2006, while Ethiopia and Starbucks were locked in dispute, it preemptively signed an origin authorization contract with Ethiopia, effortlessly winning a corporate image battle.

As of November 2007, Ethiopia had applied for trademark rights to Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, and Harar in 36 countries, and had been approved by 28 of them. It had also signed origin trademark authorization contracts with 24 coffee companies in the United States, Europe, and Japan, and expected another 25 large coffee companies to sign before May 2008. This gave Ethiopian coffee farmers and unions more power to set prices rather than being controlled by others, with greater protection for their income. Whether Jamaica Blue Mountain, Indonesia Mandheling, and Hawaii Kona would follow suit was worth watching.

Although Ethiopia won a beautiful victory, agricultural authorities also called on its coffee farmers not to forget to improve quality while celebrating, adopting higher standards for sun-drying, washing, and grading so consumers get value for money. Otherwise, holding trademark rights alone would make it hard to compete with specialty beans from other countries.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

The Yirgacheffe in a Starbucks bag and the Yirgacheffe in a specialty roaster's bag can taste very different, which is exactly why origin protection mattered so much. FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe is the most direct way to see what the region offers on its own terms. Yirgacheffe is a small town in southern Ethiopia's Sidama region, sitting at roughly 1700-2100 meters with coffee planted above 1800 meters, making it one of the highest coffee-growing areas in the world. The name became a byword for Ethiopian specialty coffee after the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange separated it from Sidama in 2010, and its signature of white jasmine florals, bright citrus and lemon acidity, and a tea-like body has held ever since. FrontStreet's version is the classic entry-level cup and remains one of the most affordable introductions to Ethiopian coffee.

For a more specific lot, FrontStreet's Gedding cooperative coffee comes from the Gedding village in the Woka area at the southeastern edge of Yirgacheffe, once part of the YCFCU-affiliated Woka cooperative before becoming an independent single origin in 2012 with roughly 300 member farmers. Using traditional washed processing, it delivers clean, bright citrus and lemon acidity with jasmine fragrance and a honeyed finish. And if you prefer the sun-dried style that Starbucks' Xueletuo represents, FrontStreet's sun-dried Red Cherry offers a specialty-roaster version for comparison: only fully ripe, undamaged cherries, dried on raised beds with turning every two to three hours in the first days and three to five weeks in total before the fruit is stripped. It shows peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon, with berry juiciness, honey sweetness, and a creamy body that make the difference between commodity and specialty Yirgacheffe easy to taste.