Amy G. | Coffee Case Study Group 1

Field Study Components:

3a) On your website complete the table of your group’s 3 favorite insights from visiting Olympia Coffee Roasters and/or Batdorf and Bronson.

3b) Consider how cafes may serve as places to educate coffee drinkers about coffee terroir. Create a post that includes a table of your group’s 4 favorite coffee cafes (eg. places) that offer customers information related to different aspects of terroir. In your table include: business name, business address, any particular resourceful people, and the aspects of terroir you can learn about at this place. At least three of these places should be other than Olympia Coffee Roasters or B &Bronson.

3c) Conduct two interviews with pre-authorized staff at Olympia field trip sites or group members regarding their experiences of terroir and coffee, one of which MUST be recorded (at least 1 minute excerpted to be posted to your website).

3d) Create a post of the favorite coffee-related thing you tasted. Describe what it was in detail. Next, describe WHY this was your favorite taste. To build on Escher’s “The Pale Yellow Glove” and Proust’s “The Madeleine” in The Taste Culture Reader as examples, please enjoy reading these excerpts of “coffee” in literature: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/mar/26/benjamin-obler-coffee-best-books These pieces of highly crafted “tasting” demonstrate possibilities for writing that makes present a key component of taste: the objectivities of human subjectivity (foibles and all). Here are some resources for learning to describe the taste of coffee: http://www.zecuppa.com/coffeeterms-cupping-tasting.htm and http://equalexchange.coop/sites/default/files/import/pdfs/media/news/Roast_MayJun12_WellRoundedPalate.pdf

3e) The Business of Coffee: Olympia. In this component provide images and text that demonstrate what you learned during your Olympia field work. In particular, and based on your experience, please address how “terroir” (or components of terroir, such as coffee variety, where grown) is being used to increase value, establish authenticity, highlight gastronomic pleasure, and a sense of place in relationship to the business aspects of coffee in Olympia.

photo source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/digika/4966613367

Permaculture and Coffee Component

This component of the Case Study assignment asks each group to create short written explorations of the following disciplinary perspectives as they relate to coffee and terroir. Your text should be 200-250 words for each of the four required perspectives, plus 200-250 words for your choice of a fifth perspective. Please use notes and insight from your field work in Olympia as springboards for your “Business” perspective. Similarly, notes and insight from the Anthropocene and Art Lectures Series should be referenced as springboards if you choose as your optional perspectives “art” or “climate.” Include a minimum of one image that illustrates your text for each perspective. Maps, graphs, and charts are encouraged. Include a caption with image attribution for each visual resource. Include at least two references, fully cited, one of which can be a program text.

2a) Required Disciplinary Perspectives:
i) Cultural Studies, ii) Geology/Soils, iii) Natural History, iv) Business (entrepreneurship, marketing and advertising, product development, economics, labor, or consumer relations as considered in relation to alumni lectures and tastings in class and during field trips).

2b) Choices for 5th Perspective: literature, art, agriculture, labor, colonial history, gender studies, geography, climate change, anthropocene, music, philosophy.

2c) The final part of this component is the Integrative Question. Answer this question, also in 200-250 words, including at least 1 image and 2 fully cited references.

Integrative Question: Using a permaculture design lens, outline an ideal coffee production and distribution system that integrates all disciplinary learning to satisfy the ethics of earth care, people care and fair share.

*Note: References should be peer-reviewed journal articles when available and appropriate, then books, then websites. Include references for all electronic resources. We’ll be learning Zotero in this program to generate electronic bibliographies, which we’ll link to our websites.