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22 WINE SPECTATOR • SEPT. 30, 2019California’s Coffee Frontier
BY MARK PENDERGRAST
U
ntil recently, no one thought
that high quality coffee could
be grown in the continental
United States. The finest ara-
bica beans are supposed to require high
elevation on subtropical mountain-
sides, like those in Ethiopia, Kenya and
Guatemala. It might technically be pos-
sible to grow coffee at lower altitudes,
but the flavors wouldn’t be nearly as
distinctive, floral or acidic. Or so the
conventional wisdom goes.
But conventional wisdom, in this
case, turns out to be wrong. Coffee is
now being cultivated along the south-
ern coast of California, between Santa
Barbara and San Diego, and the results
are exceptional.
Frinj Coffee (frinjcoffee.com), which
was available only in select retail stores
until last year, has now started to sell
online. Because of its quality, its rarity
and the cost of labor and production
in the United States, it is expensive—
comparable to the more exotic single-
origin beans from specialty roasters like
Blue Bottle. But for coffee fanatics look-
ing for the hottest new terroir, that is
hardly an insurmountable obstacle.
Frinj’s origins go back to 1998, when
Mark Gaskell, who worked for 23 years
as an adviser for the University of Cali-
fornia’s Small Farm Program, spotted a
coffee plant growing in Santa Barbara.
“It was just a botanical curiosity,” Gas-
kell recalls. “It’s a big jump from there
to being a viable crop.”
Intrigued, Gaskell brought some cof-
fee seeds from a friend in Costa Rica back to California and germinated
them in a greenhouse. In 2002, he presented the idea of growing some
of the resulting seedlings to Jay Ruskey, owner of Good Land Organics,
a farm specializing in exotic fruits. Ruskey accepted Gaskell’s offer, start-
ing with 37 plants. It took about four years to produce the first crop.
Price Peterson, a friend of Gaskell’s whose family grows the celebrated
coffee varietal Geisha, sampled some early cups in 2008, ultimately sug-
gesting that Gaskell and Ruskey concentrate on cultivation, pruning
and processing, and that they seek out professional Q Graders to assess
the beans. He also gave Ruskey some Geisha seeds to cultivate.
In short order, Ruskey began to scale up. He planted 2,000 trees on
his own farm and traveled to Southern California’s avocado-producing
region, persuading other growers to cultivate coffee. To join him in the
venture, he selected Lindsey Mesta, who had traveled in South Amer-
ica, knew Spanish and had apprenticed with a Hawaiian coffee grower
for a harvest season. A co-founder of Frinj, she now oversees quality
control, marketing and sales.Today, Frinj has 64,800 coffee
trees planted across 46 farms in
Southern California; about 10% of
those trees are in their first year of
production. “We’ve structured our
company to make sure that the
farmer receives the majority of the
return on a coffee sale,” Mesta
explains. “We purchase a farm’s
cherry, do all of the processing and
bring the product to market.”
Chuck Badger III and his father
are among the farmers growing
Frinj coffee trees. “We started with
test plots in the summer of 2016,
and now we have planted more,”
Badger says. “If we hit the quality
target, coffee could be the crop
that saves our historic agricultural
region, Rancho Santa Fe, where
we manage farms.” Lemons, the
family’s main crop, are in a stag-
nant market and face harmful
pests. “It’s huge that Frinj offers to
purchase all our coffee cherries,
then processes and markets them,”
Badger adds.
According to Ruskey, the beans’
long maturation time in the Cali-
fornia avocado belt compensates
for the modest altitude at which
they’re grown. Nearly a year passes
between coffee blossom and har-
vest, a duration that ultimately
produces the same intensity as
Central American coffee grown at
6,000 feet.
I sampled the Laurina ($95 for a
5-ounce package), whose complex
flavors feature cherry and lime
hints and citrusy acidity. Recommended to those looking for less of a
caffeinated lift, it contains only 50% of the caffeine of most arabica
beans. I also brewed the Caturra Rojo ($75 for 5 ounces), which is fully
caffeinated and displays mango and apricot overtones, with a lingering
maple sweetness. It’s a classic, balanced cup.
Some questions remain about the future of California-grown coffee.
Will the state’s climate really allow for long-term coffee growth? What
if there is a severe killing frost, as happened in the Paraná region dur-
ing an early Brazilian coffee boom? It’s possible, but unlikely, according
to Gaskell. There are mild Southern California frosts, but the coffee
can withstand them. The coastal mountains provide various micro-
climates that are perfectly positioned in aspect, slope and altitude to be
frost-free. These zones also protect the plants from harsh winds.
With time and a little luck, these Frinj products may be poised to
move from the periphery to the center of the gourmet coffee world.
Mark Pendergrast is author of Uncommon Grounds, a history of coffee,
and Beyond Fair Trade.Above: Frinj CEO and co-founder Jay Ruskey
Below: Five stages of coffee processing, from unripe berries to roasted beans