What Makes Specialty Coffee "Special "

Nowadays, “specialty coffee” is a household name, but it’s not always clear what criteria render the coffee special.

Although specialty coffee is often linked to the rise of the third wave in the early aughts, the term dates back to 1974. Moreover, while the two terms are often used interchangeably, they’re not mutually exclusive: not all third-wave coffee is specialty and vice versa.

When quality drives a trend

“Too often, coffee is still simply assumed as a caffeine vehicle,” says Massimo Barnabà, a Trieste-based coffee expert who manages special projects for Bfarm, a coffee academy and consultancy affiliated with the Specialty Coffee Association that’s headquartered near Florence. “It allows you to wake up in the morning or gives you a moment of energy or an excuse to take an afternoon break. Sometimes these goals are achieved, though the drinks do not actually please the senses.” To him, specialty coffee means not only superior quality but the most important result: superior pleasure.

He adds that specialty coffee begins with the coffee’s origins and embraces the entire process. “It requires a knowledge of origins and the provenance of all the work upstream of the bean.” He compares it to a journey that begins with drinking a superb cup of coffee for the first time, discerning what makes the flavors special, and then discovering new and better ones along the way.

Bean selection

Cherry selection is crucial: specialty coffee is made from the beans of the ripest cherries. Pickers don’t have to meet a quota; they just have to collect the reddest fruit. Unfortunately, manufacturers taking a quantity over quality approach may turn a blind eye to the bad ones, throwing them in with the good ones to maximize the product’s yield.