DALE HARRIS INTERVIEW Extended Article with the 2017 World Barista Champion
DALE HARRIS INTERVIEW
Extended Article with the 2017 World Barista Champion
Coffee-related competitions have come a long way in the last several years. Even if you were try to explain what a coffee competitions actually is to the average coffee drinker, you might be faced with a pretty puzzled look, “…but, it’s JUST coffee…?” Well, to the world-class coffee champions of our time, this deliciously brown beverage is certainly a lot more than that.
Earlier this year, I partnered with the Barcelona-based Solo Magazine to conduct a round of interviews with last year’s coffee competition winners for their publication. In connecting with Dale Harris, World Barista Champion 2017, we had a lot more to chat about than would make its way into the magazine, so I decided to put together this extended and exclusive interview for The Nomad Barista to get a bit of behind the scenes on what it means to be a master of your craft from the master himself.
1. You mentioned in one interview that you originally wanted to do the presentation in Spanish, assumedly because your competition coffee was from El Salvador. Do you speak it? And did you have a plan for translating it to the judges who didn't understand? I'm sure our Spanish-speaking readers would have loved that one.
I don’t speak Spanish! But I have always been interested in the challenges of communication, particularly when it comes to coffee, sensory attributes, and reaching past language barriers.
So many coffee producing countries are Spanish-speaking, but the competition and much of the specialty industry is heavily rooted in English, for better or worse. I think there’s an interesting story to tell here, specifically on the impact language has on setting our sensory expectations and what our experience of specialty stands to lose when nuance is lost in translation. The language we use to describe flavour is influenced by the culture and the language we grow up in but the sensory inputs we experience when we taste something are the same wherever we’re from.
I never got as far as looking to address the challenges this might have added for me personally but the reality is that a number of competitors within the championship face this challenge each year, translators are allowed but that creates other issues around performance too
2. As for Ernesto’s Wild Coffee Project at Las Brumas, he takes a very bio-intensive approach to farming. How did you go about finding this lot? Was it your interest in sustainable farming that led you to Ernesto, or was it strictly based on quality?
TL;DR: It’s my opinion that long-term relationships are the most sustainable way to source coffee - these are possible to build by chasing quality – but finding specific lots like the Las Brumas Wild Forest Project requires turning up year after year, trying coffee, and trusting in the relationship you’ve built with a producer. The lot I used in competition was rejected by other buyers, but we bought it because we believed in Ernesto and the work he was doing and found a way to demonstrate it’s value through the competition.
Longer answer: It was important to me for this competition to select a coffee based on its taste balance and not on its story - I believe when you engage with a coffee properly, almost every single one has a story to tell, but when we tasted this blind on the cupping table, both the flavours and balance felt right for presenting in the competition.
My boss, Steve, usually likes to choose my coffees for me, or at least narrow down the field from the 60+ lots we have in the roastery at any given time, but for for what felt like was my only shot at the worlds, it was important to me that I choose a coffee based on my taste alone. Steve was allowed to pick coffees for me based on a few simple rules:
The coffee had to be in the building already, it was important to me that we weren’t just buying a coffee only for competition - small competition lots are an unsustainable way for producers to make a living - but also that it wasn’t somewhere in a container on the ocean.
He wasn’t allowed to tell me what he thought was right, he had to actually let me choose and not sneakily try to influence my decision.
In the end, it was the SL28 from the Las Brumas Wild Forest Project that won out based on taste alone - in some ways, the having the incredible story behind the taste with which to work on a competition routine was mostly luck.
Ernesto is widely respected in El Salvador as one of their most progressive coffee farmers and has a history of success at both the COE but also at WBC, having grown both the coffees that Alejandro Mendez used when he won the championships in Bogotá. That success, however, hasn’t made life easy. Coffee farming is difficult and there are no guaranteed results; this has been Neto’s hardest year since he began working in coffee. I feel both really privileged that through Steve and Hasbean, I had the opportunity to work with Neto’s coffee, but also that we can celebrate his work at a time when it matters most.
3. As a seasoned barista championship competitor, do you have any tips for the aspiring competitors out there in terms of staying creative but also finding their confidence up on stage?
Well, first – the best way to get better at competing is to compete, so don’t let a lack of confidence hold you back – we all start somewhere!
In terms of confidence, the most important thing to remember is that the judges are there to support you - any stress you feel in competition is stress you’re putting on yourself. Imagine that the judges are really just four lovely customers who are there to have your coffee because they’re genuinely interested in what you have to say.
Regarding creativity and searching for ideas, my suggestion is to always start with a small idea that you’re excited by: you can build a coherent, focused presentation by starting with one, small idea and teasing it out into something bigger, rather than starting with six big ideas and trying to cram them all in to a 15-minute presentation.
4. What got you into sourdough fermentation? And do you see any parallels or possible applications with coffee processing?
I suppose it was the same thing that got me into coffee – interesting flavours, a story of provenance and quality, but also the ability to have a super enjoyable hands-on learning experience with lots of room for improvement.
Fermentation is involved in most of the complex foodstuffs we taste (and enjoy!), but my (anecdotal) experience is that the specific fermentation activity used within coffee processing doesn’t directly influence flavour as much as the language around processing methods might otherwise lead us to believe.
In my experience, terroir, temperature, and the overall speed of drying seem to impact flavor much more – but I look forward to reading research and tasting coffees that contradict this!
5. Now on the world stage of Specialty Coffee, what would be your top two messages you have to share to those with open ears about the coffee industry and where it’s heading? What do you think is the 'Fourth Wave'?
Waves, as a concept, are only useful as a way for us to understand broad changes over a long period of time in hindsight – rather than thinking about the next broad wave, it’s more important to focus on the many small changes happening all the time at origin, in cafes, in the way that people drink coffee at home.
The advent of new technology and more precise measurement is influencing the ways in which we brew, process, and farm coffee – as the technology becomes more available at a lower price, the techniques and quality they allow will be available more widely across the industry.
No one can predict the future of specialty coffee, but to me, our biggest opportunity for growth is still service. We haven’t seen much change in the past few years in how we serve specialty coffee, but if we can find new approaches to service, we can add immediate value to both our customers and the chain, whilst differentiating ourselves from other sectors of the industry.
FOOTNOTES
Cover photo by Al Higgins, @al_higgins.