Now, these very differentiated coffees from one another, like a Bordeaux wine from a Beaujolais, and they get to your cup generally as a mixture: it can be very pleasant but the originality of the individual coffee is lost.
The recent coffee crisis incited the small producers to come out of their traditional circuits, letting a growing public of skillful “amateurs” discover the quality of the differentiated coffees, of controlled origin and precise traceability.

Today, the terms arabica and robusta, as well as the country of origin, are insufficient to define coffee.

What would a French consumer traveling in a distant country think when he reads in a wine bottle a proud label that says “Pure red wine from France”?

The quality criteria of coffee has become objective: body, aroma, acidity, persistence, balance; or on the contrary: roughness, bitterness, astringency. The cupping is done by professional cuppers.



The quality criteria is actually worldwide accepted and used.
These categories are defined according to the name of the defective beans present in a sample of 300 grams of green coffee. These defective beans have a direct influence over the olfactory and savoring qualities of coffee.

The defects are classified according to two big categories:
— Category 1 groups the most important defects:
Black beans, sour beans, presence of dry cherries, presence of fungus, presence of foreign material to the sample, insect perforations in great quantity.
— Category 2 understands lesser defects:
Partially black beans, partially sour, insect perforations in small quantities, floater beans, immature beans, wrinkled beans, shell beans, fractured beans, chipped beans and cherry fragments.

An award winning coffee can’t have any defect; these coffees are called, by the way: “zero defects”.

A special or gourmet coffee can’t tolerate any defect of the first category and will a maximum of five defects of the second one.

A Premium coffee should have a maximum of eight defects of any classification.

A Mainstream coffee is the one that’s commercialized on a big scale, generic in nature and priced in the stock exchange market.

The coffee producing countries are becoming more numerous and organize national contests where they award prizes to exceptional “terroir” coffees. These are the plantation coffees, of certified origin under three parameters: the country, the region and the plantation.
Soluna-cafes has chosen for you the best amongst these coffees, originated from Honored Plantations.

From the consumers’ point of view, this is a guaranteed quality buy.
Choosing a differentiated coffee is carefully selecting a denomination of origin, ensuring that it really is an optimum quality product and spreading its unique aromas and flavors. Every cup will be a discovery and every time a renovated pleasure…

Balzac and coffee...

Let’s french author Honoré de Balzac conclude.
(Balzac was a big coffee consumer: a few hectoliters accompanied the writing of his Human Comedy !):

Suddenly everything is agitated: the ideas explode like battalions of the great army over the battle field, and the battle begins.
The memories get in a step of load, extended signs; the light mount of comparisons is being developed in a magnificent gallop; the logic and its artillery concur with its train and “gargousses”. The “traits d’esprit” gets there in shots; the figures are constructed, the paper is covered in ink because the evening starts and ends in black water torrents, like the battle for its black powder.