What is Full Red Cherry Natural Process? What Does the Red Cherry Project Mean in Coffee? What is Specialty Coffee?

What Does "Fully Red Cherry" Really Mean in Coffee?

The term "Fully Red Cherry" is not uncommon, as it often appears on promotional posters or coffee bean bags. However, since it's frequently listed under the processing method section, many people mistakenly believe it refers to some novel processing technique, such as "Fully Red Cherry Natural Process..."

In reality, Fully Red Cherry is not the name of a processing method, but rather indicates that the harvesting method used for these coffee beans is "Fully Red Cherry Picking." This means that during harvest, coffee farmers selectively pick only the deep red coffee cherries. (Some coffee varieties mature in different colors, but that's another story.) So why do many coffee beans emphasize this point in their marketing?

Some astute readers may have already figured it out – that's right, it indicates that these coffee beans required more manual labor and are of superior quality! Today, FrontStreet Coffee will share why these simple three words "Fully Red Cherry" contain so much meaning!

Why Emphasize Fully Red Cherries in Coffee?

The deep red appearance of coffee cherries doesn't just indicate that the coffee is mature – it also announces that the substances within the coffee have completed their transformation. FrontStreet Coffee believes that most of us have eaten unripe bananas, persimmons, or plums, and their taste characteristics are remarkably consistent: astringent and sour. This is because the organic acids in these fruits haven't yet converted to sugars, resulting in high acidity and an unpleasant taste! The same principle applies to coffee cherries.

Although coffee cherries aren't primarily meant for eating, the presence of sugar is crucial. When beans lack sufficient sugar content, even with high-quality processing and roasting, it's difficult for coffee beans to develop elegant and captivating aromas. The resulting brewed coffee simply cannot taste good. Therefore, coffee beans harvested from unripe coffee cherries are classified as defect beans – what FrontStreet Coffee shared yesterday regarding "Quakers" or "unripe beans" refers to exactly this.

To ensure coffee quality, nowadays most producing regions harvest fully red cherries (with some exceptions, but unripe fruits are sorted out during processing). This might sound like common sense, but in earlier times, harvesting fully red cherries wasn't necessarily standard practice. The coffee harvesting period lasts as long as three months, during which coffee cherries on the same tree mature at different times. This means that fruits on the same tree don't mature simultaneously – some ripen early, others later. Therefore, we can see coffee cherries on the same branch displaying different colors, a mix of red and green.

In this situation, if farmers wanted to harvest only red cherries, they needed to pick them one by one manually – a tedious and time-consuming process. In an era when specialty coffee concepts weren't yet popular, coffee purchasing in almost all producing regions prioritized quantity over quality. To earn more money, farmers would harvest all coffee cherries regardless of maturity. This harvesting method was also fast – they could simply place their hand at the branch tip and strip it to the end, causing all coffee cherries to fall off.

Due to the inclusion of large quantities of unripe fruits, coffee bean quality at that time was inconsistent – sometimes good, sometimes bad, depending on the proportion of ripe cherries in the harvest. This inconsistent quality not only increased the time cost of manual bean sorting but also affected coffee flavor expression and selling prices. To obtain higher profits, green coffee merchants had to further depress the purchase prices of coffee cherries. This, in turn, forced farmers to harvest even more unripe cherries, because without this harvesting method, they couldn't earn enough money to survive. Thus, this cycle continued for a long time, particularly in Ethiopia, where coffee production is dominated by smallholder farmers.

It wasn't until 2007 that Trabocca, the Netherlands' largest green coffee merchant, proposed "Operation Cherry Red," breaking this deadlock. Operation Cherry Red encouraged farmers to be more attentive to coffee cherry harvesting and coffee bean processing by increasing the purchase prices of high-quality green coffee beans. This resulted in improved coffee bean quality, higher selling prices, and consequently increased farmer incomes. Consumers could also enjoy more delicious coffee. It was truly a win-win-win project. (For more details about Operation Cherry Red, you can refer to the article "What is Operation Cherry Red?")

Today, the concept of specialty coffee has become deeply ingrained, and harvesting fully red cherries has long been the standard for high-quality coffee. Among the coffee beans featured by FrontStreet Coffee, Santa Weni is a variety that the green coffee merchant specifically marked as being harvested from fully red cherries. When brewed as coffee, we can experience prominent pineapple aromas, blueberry sweetness, abundant mango juice notes, and a mulled wine finish – truly refreshing and delightful!

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