In 1974 the term "Speciality Coffee" was coined.

Thus, and with this term, "speciality coffeewas given symbolic form to a concept that would turn the international coffee market upside down.

And this term was used to rename a type of coffee that, before the story we are about to tell you, ended up in the rubbish bins of the large coffee producers. To understand the value we place on this type of coffee in 2021, we have to travel back in time to 1974. We are going to explain how the term came about, why, and who coined it. Because the story deserves it because it is linked to the genius of a woman who knew how to intuit what no one else could see. A woman who knew how to carve out a niche for herself in a man's world to create, out of nothing, the speciality coffee.

Norwegian Erna Knutsen was the first person to talk about speciality coffee.

It happened during an interview for the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal. A publication specialising in this world of coffee and tea flavours and aromas. Since it was founded in 1901, it has never missed its monthly appointment to inform coffee growers all over the world about the news and curiosities of their object of desire: coffee. A magazine read by producers and their customers, the consumers: the best showcase to talk about coffee. But to get to speciality coffee, we must first meet the person who coined the term.

Erna Knutsen was still a child when her family emigrated to the United States. One of the memories she will take with her to the other side of the Atlantic will be the smell of coffee from her early years in a neighbourhood full of Italian immigrants, with whom she lived and with whom she ended up sharing her passion for coffee. This coexistence made her learn to distinguish the aroma of different types of coffees and also of their processing. She felt the beans between her fingers, she knew how to appreciate the intensity of its aroma when she brought it close to her nose. And to prolong that same sensation with the smell that those beans had impregnated in his fingertips. He learned to shudder as he crushed the beans and to be overwhelmed by the explosion of colour, smell, and then taste, of that freshly ground, well brewed and well flavoured coffee.

A taste for coffee was the only inheritance her parents were able to leave her.

Before inheritance it was passion, and it all stemmed from a memory of her... of getting up in the mornings in Norway to make coffee for her father, who was out the door at 5 a.m. every morning on his way to work.Back in the United States, she got married and found a job as a secretary. And coffee crossed her path again, as she worked for several coffee companies. She ended up as the president's secretary in one of them. Erna combined duty with devotion.

It was taking root in a profoundly masculine world. 

The coffee trade. Location of plantations, contracting of estates... Exploitation; Importation; Handling, marketing and sale. A hostile terrain, a priori, for a woman of her time.

Her innate curiosity, her love for this drink and her character pushed her to continue experimenting in new fields... She learned to taste coffee almost on the sly, in her spare time and trying to go unnoticed. Again because even this field of this industry had a male pattern. Better to say: male palate. She mastered her senses and moulded, above all her sense of smell and taste, to the particularities of the different coffees. And of the different processed coffees.

So much so that once, against all odds, his boss and president froze in front of a café. He doubted whether he should invest in it or not, and when in doubt he was thinking of not adding it to his catalogue. Erna was quick to taste a sample of the coffee. And she recommended her boss to get it. The boss trusted his secretary's advice and did what she told him to do. He got hold of that batch of coffee and succeeded. This earned her the vice-presidency of the company.

From broken coffee to speciality coffee

There were batches of coffee beans that were discarded with the epithet "broken coffee". Erna had no plans to call her coffee "speciality coffee", but in the middle of this interview she was asked about the "broken coffees" she had been able to rescue. She realised that she should never again refer to her coffee as "broken coffee". broken and with complete naturalness and spontaneity she called it "speciality coffee". And to this day. Erna had intuited something that had escaped all the coffee manufacturers of her time: the poor quality of this beverage. The ambition and desire to put her coffee in every kitchen in every home in America, 365 days a year, had proved unfortunate for the product itself. The standardisation of coffee had reached such a point that all coffees tasted the same.

All but a small percentage of coffees, which the entrepreneurs called "broken coffees". These coffee beans tasted different. They looked different. They smelled different. And when you mixed a few of these beans in a batch destined for that standardised coffee, they ruined it with their nuanced smells and flavours. Not only did they not work well for that "standard coffee". Moreover, each batch of this "broken coffee" was unique. That's why their bags ended up in the rubbish bins outside the coffee factories.

Manufacturers despised these batches of coffee, precisely because of their uniqueness.

Erna appreciated the aromas of these discarded coffees. And she roasted them and tasted them and rediscovered coffee. She understood that coffee was more than just an energy drink. It could have this property, of course, but it could, and for her should, be conceived as a drink to delight the palate. Her sense of smell and her feminine intuition led her to sell coffee in small quantities to small groups of consumers who would not drink their coffee out of an obligation to stay awake but for the pleasure of savouring it.

This is how the speciality café came into being, although it did not yet have that name.

This new consumer would be willing to pay a little more for a better product. He understood that he would have to break away from the large coffee estates and discover smallholders who cultivated their coffee lovingly and according to local tradition on their family lands. Factors such as altitude, climate, soil and time became determining factors in making a coffee exclusive. The world of coffee was beginning to enter a universe of sensations, nuances and sensory perceptions.

Erna did not hesitate to travel to meet these coffee producers. She wanted to name them. She wanted to know first-hand where the coffee she would sell came from and the seasons when each of those coffees would be available. This is another feature that distinguishes it from the latifundios: the smallholdings were so exclusive because the owner could grow and harvest one or two crops a year, and always small. This would add value to his coffee, but he had to be able to rotate suppliers so that he would never run out of his star product.. He also called on small coffee roasters who could use his industry to roast and grind small quantities of coffee.

This dedication from 1974 is what we maintain at Syra Coffee in 2022.

This is the origin of our passion for naming our coffees, ephemeral, valuable and tasty, following the example of our inspiration: Erna Knutsen. She lived her American dream and coined the term "speciality coffee" which is still cutting-edge today and we owe it to a pioneering woman in a man's industry.