Now that Starbucks has said it wants to grow through acquisitions, everyone is guessing who it might snap up. Starbucks says only that its expansion will be international and in sales to grocery stores, which makes speculation about the chain buying Peet's Coffee somewhat confusing.

Other ideas:

• Dean Foods, per an interview I did with Smead Value Fund manager William Smead. It's cheap right now, and it sells milk, which Starbucks buys by the truckload.


• Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, whose single-serve Keurig brewers have far outshone Kraft's single-serve Tassimo brewers, to which Starbucks was tied before it decided to fire Kraft as its coffee bean distributor. Morningstar analyst RJ Hottovy wrote, "Although a potential merger is by no means a certainty, management admitted that it's been intrigued by the growth potential of this category and has seen improvement in the quality of Green Mountain's coffee assortment."


• A host of small food companies and distributors we've never heard of.


• Who am I missing?

In other coffee news:

• In the realm of real rather than speculative acquisitions, Cherry Street Coffee House bought Seattle Bagel Bakery, where it had been a customer for nearly 18 years. "When we caught wind that this 24-year-old bagel bakery had fallen on tough times and were leaning towards closing their doors, we had to do something about it. For the past 6 months I've been rebuilding the bakery from the ground up and as of the Oct. 1st, I own it," e-mailed Cherry Street's AJ Ghambari. Check out the video celebrating bagels by Mitch Mattraw at Cabfare Productions.
  

  Seattle Bagel Bakery from cabfare productions on Vimeo.



• A new group called the Seattle Coffee Society will hold its first meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 9, at Seattle Coffee Works on Pike Street across from Pike Place Market. "This is a club for coffee professionals and the most passionate amateurs," according to organizer Daniel Humphries. "We will brew coffee, look at some video from origin, and have a discussion on how different coffee origins distinguish themselves in the specialty coffee market."


• Ezra Fieser's article in last Sunday's Seattle Times looked at how and why Starbucks ships green coffee beans from Central America to the U.S. for roasting, then back again. The company told Fieser, "The challenge we face is that many coffee-producing countries don't allow the importation of green coffee to protect their local industry. Given that we blend coffee from 25 countries, it would be difficult to offer our wide range of products with such restrictions." However, neither Guatemala nor El Salvador -- the countries he was writing about -- restricts green coffee imports, customs representatives in those countries said.


• A judge in Illinois threw out a lawsuit that alleged Starbucks was to blame for a customer's tea burns, The Consumerist reported.


• Starbucks completed a pilot test in which it and International Paper converted used Starbucks cups into new coffee cups. That's one more hurdle cleared in the obstacle course toward a goal of having all the communities where it owns stores to be able to recycle coffee cups by 2015. The biggest challenge is convincing the recycling industry that its cups are worth recycling. (Photo of one day's recycling at Cascade Recycling in Woodinville by Seattle Times photographer Erika Schultz.)


• Finally, I'm back from vacation and assignment, and I miss the coffee and fresh basil lemonade -- like fresh from the cafe's back porch -- at Revolutionary Grounds Books & Coffee on North Fourth Avenue in Tucson. Its beans are roasted by Gadsen Coffee in far-flung Arivaca, which gets its coffee from organic, shade-grown farms in Chiapas, Mexico. "Old Bisbee Roasters are also amazing," said Joy Soler (pictured below), who opened the leftist cafe and bookstore two years ago with her husband, Paul Gattone. Their ethos appears at Marxism study groups and on the menu with drinks like "Hot Sasha," a thick hot chocolate with cayenne pepper.

  

The Food & Drug Administration considers this week whether to allow the production of genetically modified salmon, which if it is allowed would not be labeled as such. It would be the first genetically altered animal allowed as food in the U.S.

Engineered crops have been permitted -- and not labeled -- for years, including genetically modified coffee.

In 1999, the University of Hawaii was granted a U.S. patent on coffee that's genetically altered to stop growing just short of maturity so that berries are at the same stage when they are picked, The Independent in London reported. The coffee is then ripened by a chemical spray.

Integrated Coffee Technologies in Hawaii markets that coffee and engineered coffee trees to yield caffeine-free beans. It was sold this summer by Pacific Land & Coffee, which has been hemorrhaging cash. Integrated Coffee and Coscina Brothers Coffee were bought by former officers and directors for $110,000.

Kona growers and others are concerned about Integrated Coffee's engineering, and many including PCC Natural Markets in Seattle see the altered coffee as a threat to small farmers. In 2008, the Hawaii County Council banned genetically modified coffee on the big island, but the legislature rejected a state-wide ban.

Integrated Coffee appears to have been behind the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, which created the first decaffeinated coffee trees in 2003, the BBC reported.

In 2004, vandals destroyed a genetically altered coffee crop in French Guiana, after researchers there determined that they had found a way to protect crops from moth larvae. (But had they tried disrupting moth sex first?)

And in 2006, Nestle patented another form of genetically modified coffee in Europe. It altered the beans to make its instant coffee more soluble.

The last time coffee prices rose as fast as they have lately was in early 2005, and arabica coffee subsequently dropped 38 percent in six months, Bloomberg reports in a comprehensive look at the recent run-up in coffee prices.

Prices remain skittish, because stockpiles are low. But arabica supplies could exceed demand by 6.7 million bags for the year ahead, ABN Amro Bank NV and VM Group predicts.

Vince Byrd, president of Ohio-based Smucker's coffee business, which has raised prices for its Folger's and Dunkin' Donuts brands, said the rally has been driven more by hedge funds than supply issues, Bloomberg reported.

Not everything looks rosy for next year's harvest. In Colombia, coffee could continue to suffer from the worst outbreak of fungus in a quarter century that was brought on by wet weather, Bloomberg reported.

The International Coffee Organization predicted last month that short-term coffee supplies are the biggest mover for prices. A large crop is expected from Brazil and a number of countries will return to normal production levels, ICO said. Total production for the crop year just ending will be about 120 million bags, down 6.6 percent.

In the coming crop year, ICO predicts production of 133 to 135 million bags.

Climate problems are expected to hurt Mexico and other countries in central America, and possibly Colombia, ICO executive director Nestor Osorio wrote. "The situation is not much different in Vietnam, where the combined effects of climate change and the El Nino phenomenon are threatening agricultural production, including coffee."

About half of the green coffee that spins and pops in Mark Barany's roaster in Bellevue comes from farms he knows. Barany (in photo by Seattle Times photographer Steve Ringman) has not visited them yet. His roastery and Seattle cafe, Kuma Coffee, are just a few years old and do not throw off lots of cash and free time for trips abroad.

He meets farmers online, and if their coffee sounds like a fit, they send samples. Then he draws up contracts to pay them and finds an importer who charges another 30 to 50 cents a pound to move the beans from Central America to Puget Sound.

It takes time and work, but Barany considers the effort worthwhile, because he is paying farmers what their coffee is worth and cutting out the middlemen.

If that sounds like Fair Trade, think again.

Barany and a growing group of coffee roasters have become disenchanted with the Fair Trade model and think they can do better. Known as direct trade, their movement is small and does not having uniform definitions or guidelines. Customers often have to take the roaster's word for it that growers were paid fairly.

They crave greater legitimacy, and for that reason a handful - including Barany - have publicly disclosed the prices they pay for coffee.

Check out the highlights of a brewing battle between Fair Trade and direct trade in a story I wrote for Friday's paper. I didn't include a lot of details and arguments from both sides, so please voice your opinion, set me straight, whatever needs to be done to keep this discussion going.

Nekisse is known as an extremely tasty, high-priced Ethiopian coffee. It has sold for $12 a cup in New York City, but can be drunk for less than $3 at Fonte Coffee Roaster and Wine Bar, 1321 First Avenue.

Unlike Harrar, Yirgacheffe and Sidamo, Nekisse is not a region in Ethiopia.

"Nekisse is a made-up word, a name to identify a style of coffee," said Fonte master roaster Steve Smith.

The Nekisse style was created by Ninety Plus Coffee of Colorado, which has a difficult-to-penetrate web site and did not return a message last week. Ninety Plus also developed the Beloya style of coffee, which created a ballyhoo a couple years ago but is no longer available for complicated reasons involving the Ethiopian coffee exchange.

After Ninety Plus creates a style, it finds a farm or farms that will grow it. In the case of Nekisse, it's a farm in the Sidamo region in southern Ethiopia, Smith said.

Arabica coffee futures rose 11 percent last week, their biggest gain since 2006, Bloomberg reported. But they're down this week on speculation that a boom crop in Brazil will remedy the low worldwide inventories that have kept arabica prices high this year.

The U.S. government said it's going to be a big year for Brazil, the world's largest grower of arabica coffee. Farms there started harvesting early because of unexpectedly rainy weather last summer. The coffee also ripened unevenly, raising questions about its quality.

Output from Colombia, the second-largest supplier, will remain below its five-year average, Commerzbank AG wrote in a report that Bloomberg quoted.

Coffee guru Jerry Baldwin, who co-founded Starbucks and is now a director of Peet's Coffee, recently visited Ethiopia with his photographer wife, Jane.

They dropped by the Addis Ababa offices of TechnoServe, which in 2008 announced a four-year, $47 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to be used in its ongoing effort to improve coffee quality -- and therefore prices to farmers -- in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda. The program now includes Ethiopia.

Baldwin describes their visit at TheAtlantic.com, where he regularly writes about coffee.

The program has helped some farmers doubled their income per pound of coffee, and the higher yields that are expected in future seasons will bring even more money, he writes.

"Peet's Coffee is already so impressed with the quality progress that it has developed a completely new blend, Uzuri African Blend (uzuri is Kiswahili for beauty)," writes Baldwin, who is on the board of Technoserve.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and activist photojournalist Jonathan Torgovnik will participate in a panel discussion this evening at Seattle University on the lasting effects of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The talk is from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Pigott Auditorium. Details here.

Torgovnik's book, Unintended Consequences, chronicles the lives of women who bore children and contracted HIV after being raped amid the widespread violence. The fallout continues, with some being rejected by their own families.

Women have played a big role in reviving coffee plantations in Rwanda, where Starbucks opened a farmer support center last year. Like the company's long-standing support center in Costa Rica, it helps farmers grow better coffee that can be sold at higher prices. Schultz also visited Rwanda last year and met women coffee farmers who weave baskets in the off season; some baskets were subsequently sold in Starbucks stores.

Tonight's discussion will be hosted by David Powers, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Seattle University. It's open to the public, and e-mail reservations are recommended.

Photo of Maraba Coffee Co-op in Rwanda used with permission of Colleen Taugher via FlickR:

Juan Valdez closed its last Seattle cafe in July, but the fictional character and his mule Conchita returned this morning to hand out samples of Colombian coffee at Westlake Center. (Thanks to business editor Becky Bisbee for the photo.)

They're on a five-city tour that includes New York, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles.

Juan Valdez represents the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation, which promotes Colombian coffee through commercials, promotions, national sweepstakes and cafes in Colombia, New York and some airports.

Ezra Fieser, who wrote an insightful article for Time magazine last fall about the limitations of Fair Trade coffee, wrote a story for our paper this weekend on the limitations of organic coffee.

Growers are giving up on organic because it costs more to grow than it's worth, Fieser found. Some roasters won't buy the beans at all, and even when they do, the price doesn't cover farmers' costs.

"Although organic still pays a premium of as much as 25 percent over conventional coffee," he wrote, "it's not enough to cover the added cost of production and make up for the smaller yields."

The market appears to be validating what a 2005 study predicted about organic coffee -- that it would not be sustainable. The rewards are not worth growers' efforts, including the need to buy large amounts of composted organic matter to keep yields high, that study said.

The organic article is getting lots of attention on the paper's web site, but I think Fieser's other story from the World Coffee Conference in Guatemala City is even more shocking. Demand for coffee next year is expected to be just 10 million sacks short of production, the International Coffee Organization estimates.

"We're nearing the razor's edge of danger where supply can't meet demand," Ric Rhinehart, executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, says in that article.

There's more demand from places like Russia and India, and supply has been threatened by things like higher fuel prices and global warming, according to Fieser's report. "Weather was a major factor in the 28 percent drop in Latin American coffee production in the initial three months of the current harvest," coffee representatives told him.

PHOTO CREDIT: ERIKA SCHULTZ/THE SEATTLE TIMES; Seasonal coffee workers unload baskets of coffee cherries into a transport truck at Santa Eduviges in Costa Rica.

Caffe Umbria is selling a limited-run Haiti Hope Coffee Blend online and at its cafes in Pioneer Square and in Portland's Pearl District. It's contributing $5 from the sale of each $10 bag to Mercy Corps, a leader in Haitian relief efforts. Jesse Sweeney at Umbria said its goal is to sell 1,000 12-ounce bags for a donation of $5,000 to the cause.

For something more nostalgic and less affordable, check out Vashon Island Coffee Roasterie's $375 Wet Whisker Finca El Gato. It's a limited-run coffee from the Costa Rican farm of Jim Stewart, co-founder of the Wet Whisker, later known as Stewart Brothers Coffee, later known as SBC and Seattle's Best Coffee.

$350 of each purchase is a tax-deductible donation to the Vashon Island Coffee Foundation, a non-profit Stewart founded that has provided support for the coffee growers in Guatemala and elsewhere.

"This coffee bears the name of my coffee farm and original company that I started way back when in 1969," Stewart writes on the site. "Old-time 'Seattelites' will remember the place down on the waterfront. I hope you have gathered that this is more than coffee, it is an experience from cherry to cup that you deserve to fully savor."

The aroma of incense and roasting coffee filled a room at the Northwest African American Museum on Saturday afternoon, as five women demonstrated a centuries-old ritual from their home country of Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee.

It was not the intimate, hours-long event that Ethiopian coffee ceremonies typically are.

A few dozen attendees crowded the room, chatting and laughing and walking around, fueled by excitement and coffee. Some were from Seattle's Ethiopian community, which the museum estimates numbers 20,000 to 25,000 people.

"I like to come and see what other people think of the culture," said Endanchy Girma, a native Ethiopian who has lived in Seattle for more than 30 years.

She plans to open a coffee shop called Cafe Char at 2310 E. Madison St. in March, and will hold monthly coffee ceremonies there that last the more traditional three hours.

"Every time I visit [Ethiopia], this is the best thing I enjoy, the ceremony," she said. "You get to visit all the neighbors."

Check out the rest of my story from yesterday's ceremony, including interesting comments from readers about the tradition of putting butter, salt and/or sugar in coffee.

And don't miss a Seattle blog called Coffee Politics that offers an in-depth look at the politics and economics of Ethiopian coffee, from the country's 2006/2007 trademark battle with Starbucks to more recent conflicts between the specialty coffee industry and the newish Ethiopia Commodity Exchange. Starbucks has said it's not having trouble getting specialty coffee out of Ethiopia; it also has indefinitely stalled on plans to open a farmer support center there.

Ethiopia is considered the birthplace of coffee. Legend has it that a goat herder named Kaldi noticed his goats behaving strangely after eating coffee berries. So he tried them, and danced with elation. When he took the beans to a monk, the monk became afraid and threw them in a fire, which sent the delicious aroma of roasted coffee beans throughout the monastery.

There's more -- and there are variations -- but what's most important is that Ethiopia has preserved its coffee heritage. Some of the best coffees in the world are grown there, and generations of women maintain the tradition of the Ethiopian coffee ceremony. It is one part culinary delight, one part community gathering and -- at least this weekend -- one part education.

As part of its East by Northwest exhibit on Ethiopian immigrants, the Northwest African American Museum will host an Ethiopian coffee ceremony on Saturday from 4 to 5 p.m.

If it's anything like the ceremony at the Burke Museum last spring, be ready for a terrific treat.

View Northwest African-American Museum in a larger map

An article in this week's East Bay Express examines the essence of "third-wave coffee," a term coined around 2002 that aims to define an evolved coffee scene in which baristas, roasters and farmers know each other and are connoisseurs of a product to which they're all passionately connected.

"At a cafe purporting to be third wave, the barista can tell you not only what country a particular coffee is from, but in many cases even the specific farm or plot of land," writes Luke Tsai. The third waves also tends to prefer light or medium roasts, "as opposed to the darker roasting style popularized by Peet's and Starbucks."

Some people find third-wave coffee intimidating, and Tsai describes tussles with customers over iced coffee and confusion about what "macchiato" means now that Starbucks has tried to redefine it as a caramel latte.

Others find the third wave arrogant, including Greg Sherwin of CoffeeRatings.com, who recently promised to limit his third-wave mockery to one post a week.

"Step into a family-owned operation in Italy that has made pretty damn good espresso for the past half century -- noting their attention to detail and quality controls in their operations -- and the concept of this 'third-wave' business being new suddenly seems a bit absurd," Sherwin wrote to Tsai in a recent e-mail.

Even James Freeman, who started Blue Bottle Coffee in 2002 and is considered a leader of the movement in the Bay Area, told Tsai he doesn't like the third-wave label.

"For Freeman and, one suspects, for most folks who have dedicated their lives to making coffee in what they believe to be the right way, it still comes down to the simple pursuit, at the start each day, for that one delicious, perfectly satisfying cup -- a cup that, even for a skilled barista like Freeman, might take three or four tries to get exactly right," Tsai writes.

This month, CoffeeGeek.com is donating all the income it generates from links in its holiday gift list to Coffee Kids, a Santa Fe-based non-profit that works with coffee-growing families in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Peru.

CoffeeGeek.com's gift list includes an Aeropress coffee maker ($26), Hario ceramic coffee dripper ($19), Bodum espresso cups (2 for $12.45), Chemex brewer ($28) and David Schomer's book "Espresso Coffee - Professional Techniques" ($45.95).

Audubon kicks off its 110th Christmas Bird Count this week, which seems like a good time to check in with the Smithsonian's "Bird Friendly" program intended to preserve bird habitat.

Sales of coffee grown using the Bird Friendly standards of the National Zoo's Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center rose to almost $3.5 million in 2008, about 61 percent in the U.S., according to Robert Rice, a geographer at the center who coordinates the certification program. It has grown from 2,000 pounds sold in the U.S. in 2000 to 200,400 pounds last year.

Bird Friendly coffee is certified organic and produced on farms with shade cover that is important for tropical birds threatened by deforestation. Most comes from coffee farms in Central and South America, with Peru, Guatemala and Mexico producing 77 percent of Bird Friendly coffee.

Coffee businesses around here that import and/or roast Bird Friendly coffee include Atlas Coffee Importers of Seattle, Java Trading Co. of Renton and Grounds for Change in Poulsbo.

I'm scheduled to watch a bird of another sort fly tomorrow, although Boeing isn't expected to go forward with the 787's first flight if cloud cover is as low as anticipated.

Seattle-based coffee syrup maker DaVinci Gourmet has contributed more than half a million dollars to Coffee Kids since 2006, making it the Santa Fe-based non-profit's largest annual donor.

Begun in Seattle in 1989, DaVinci was sold in 2003 to a large Ireland-based food and flavoring company called Kerry Group whose U.S. headquarters is in Beloit, Wisc. It still makes its coffee syrups at a 64,000-square-foot facility in South Seattle.

Coffee Kids works with coffee-growing families and says that with support from DaVinci -- along with $100,000 a year from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, plus contributions from award-winning baristas and auctioned espresso machines -- it has expanded its work from eight to 15 partner organizations in five countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Peru).

Highlights of Coffee Kids projects this past year:

• Project to train 2,817 people in Veracruz, Mexico, in aspects of nutrition, herbal medicines and family gardening


• A microcredit and savings project in Nicaragua with 683 people whose savings of $46,660 is used as rotating capital for low-interest loans


• Lessons in chicken production for 177 people in four communities in Chiapas, Mexico; families saved an average of $35 a month eating eggs and meat from their chickens and sold the surplus in local markets


• Building a training center Oaxaca, Mexico, to educate hundreds of families in surrounding coffee communities about sustainable agriculture, growing technologies, and human rights

I missed it on Saturday but found a post by La Marzocco and this video at The Outdoor Cat, which make me really wish I hadn't missed this insightful look at Stumptown's direct trade efforts and how they affect coffee growers' lives. Incidentally, Stumptown folks are recently back from their first foray into direct purchasing in Peru.

Basket weaving is part of the culture of Rwanda, which makes it a natural way for women there to make money, Janet Nkubana said last week during a visit to Starbucks' Seattle headquarters.

She and her sister, Joy, run a collective called Gahaya Links that sells large baskets through Macy's and is selling small basket charms through Starbucks ($8.95 each) this summer.

Some of the women are coffee pickers who weave when they're not harvesting and processing coffee beans. All are victims of Rwanda's 1994 genocide -- women who were raped and lost family members, and women whose male relatives perpetrated the crimes.

At first, basket weavers from those groups didn't speak, Nkubana said. But as they started making money and watching their families' fortunes change, they began to interact.

"Once you start fighting poverty, it reduces the bad feelings in the community," she said. "They can work together with someone whose family killed their sister or cousin.... It's an opportunity to heal my heart, to reconcile with my neighbor."

Last year, The Washington Post wrote about women rebuilding Rwanda's coffee farms, and The Hunger Project named Nkubana its 2008 Africa Prize Laureate.

Caffe Vita and One Pot held cuppings shortly after they returned, and now there are photos to see and coffee to buy from the farms they visited.

Here's their video from the trip, with underscore by Brian Eno and David Byrne :

COURTESY OF DANA DAVENPORT

Coffee worker teaches children to play guitar in the plantation's outdoor kitchen.

I asked him to share thoughts and photos from his trip, and his e-mail response was so perfect that I'm posting it directly (he's now chocolatier and coffee master for Dilettante, which Seattle Gourmet Foods bought a few years ago):

Hi Melissa,

It has taken me a few days to get back in the saddle so to speak. Yes, I took tons of pictures.

The purpose of my trip to Venezuela was to work with our Estate Direct coffee grower, Enrique Dominguez, to confer what processing procedures are best to achieve the flavor profiles we are seeking. Obviously, it was an educational trip for me - first time -- to this estate. I was pleased to see they were employing natural composting and the farm remains insecticide and chemical fertilizer free.

The topography of the region is unique. The township is Guarico (a farming mountain village of approximately 5,000 inhabitants) nestled in some of the Andes' oldest foothills. This translates to unique soil conditions.

COURTESY OF STACY PHILPOTT

Philpott, assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of Toledo (Ohio), has studied the ecology of coffee "agroecosystems" -- whataword -- in Mexico, Central America and Indonesia for the past 12 years. Check out her web site with photos of ants and coffee farms.

Tonight's talk, which is part of a series that ends in two weeks, happens at 7 p.m. in 130 Kane Hall.

On Tuesday at 7 p.m., David Browning will discuss efforts by TechnoServe, the East Coast nonprofit where he works, to help coffee farmers increase yields and improve coffee quality and marketing tools.

TechnoServe received a $47 million grant from the Gates Foundation to help East African coffee farmers boost their incomes by improving the quality of their coffee.

Like all the coffee lectures in this spring's series, it's free and open to the public. It's at 210 Kane Hall on the University of Washington's campus. More information here.

Or maybe I just have cheap taste. Caffe Vita cupped four coffees this morning, and three were from farms in the Aceh area of Sumatra -- a region devastated by the 2004 tsunami.

The three Sumatran coffees were my idea of perfect -- full flavors, big body, low acidity. I'm still learning what those terms mean in coffee, with help from experts like Caffe Vita's buyer and roaster, Mason Sager, who holds free cuppings for the public on Wednesdays and Fridays at 10 a.m.

We also tasted civet coffee from Java, the island southeast of Sumatra in Indonesia, and it was not nearly as spectacular. It gets a lot of cachet -- and a lofty price -- from how it's made: Wild cats called palm civets digest the coffee cherries, then the seeds are collected from their scat, washed and eventually roasted.

Indonesian coffee exporters A. Syafrudin and Asnawi Saleh said each producer of civet coffee -- also called Kopi Luwak -- will put four or five civets in a cage for about a month each year to do their digestive magic. Syafrudin said the animals leave their scat on big rocks out in the open, where it's easy to find and "harvest."

Here's a photo of an Asian palm civet (photo from the Czech Republic's Brnenska Zoo):

In Indonesia, it's called kopi luwak and in East Timor it's kafe-laku. The rest of the world knows it as civet coffee.

Whatever you call it, the coffee is eaten by a palm civet or toddy cat, then retrieved from its droppings before being roasted. It's some of the most expensive coffee in the world, going for more than $100 a pound.

Caffe Vita is hosting a coffee tasting on Wednesday at 10 a.m. where you can try it and meet some of the farmers who grow (and presumably harvest) it in Sumatra. They're from the Aceh region, specifically an area called Gayo where people have grown coffee for hundreds of years. That's the area that Mason Sager from Caffe Vita and Michael Hebb of One Pot visited last month.

Vita and the farmers will also cup coffee grown in the foothills around Lake Tawar and Lake Toba.

The free public cupping is at the Caffe Vita on Capitol Hill, 1005 E. Pike St.

On the evening of the Mariners' home opener, the son of baseball great Jackie Robinson is in Seattle to talk about coffee.

David Robinson, who founded the Sweet Unity Farms coffee collective in Tanzania, will speak at 7 p.m. at 210 Kane Hall on the University of Washington's campus.

His topic: "Direct Trade: Bringing the World Community Together Through Coffee."

The talk is part of a UW lecture series connected with the Burke Museum's coffee exhibit. Here's a list of all the speakers.

Photo: Sweet Unity Farms

ERIKA SCHULTZ/THE SEATTLE TIMES

Zelalem Yilma, right, pours coffee at Sunday's Ethiopian coffee ceremony at the Burke Museum.

Three native Ethiopians -- Zelalem Yilma, Yobi Guma and Menkeli Kanaa -- created a warm, invitating atmosphere for conversation and roasting, brewing and drinking some of the best coffee I've ever tasted.

"Once you get in the spirit of it, you don't want to leave," Kanaa said.

Here's the full story.

The women also talked about the difficulty that the farmer who grew the coffee we drank is having getting coffee out of Ethiopia right now. More on that subject here.

Don't forget tomorrow's 7 p.m. lecture by "Uncommon Grounds" author Mark Pendergrast at 210 Kane Hall, University of Washington campus. More information here.

The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture will host another Ethiopian coffee ceremony Sunday, June 7, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

U.S. coffee importers and roasters are worried that a new auction system in Ethiopia makes it almost impossible for them to buy coffee from the particular farmers whose beans they want.

The system, overseen by the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, mixes coffee beans from different growers before selling them for export.

That's a big deal to specialty roasters who prefer beans from certain growers and processors, and sometimes have worked with them to improve quality.

During a visit to the Ethiopian exchange in February, one Seattle coffee importer became concerned about how the new system would work.

"We spent a whole day going through the phases of grief -- anger, denial and acceptance -- just trying to get our arms around what's going on," said Craig Holt, owner of Atlas Coffee Importers.

Read the rest of the article here.

The Ethiopia Commodity Exchange wants people to know that the country is still exporting coffee. When I declined to correct this blog post from last week, because it accurately says that the country's six largest exporters -- not all of its exporters -- have been shut down, here's the e-mail I got in return:

Dear Melissa:

I find it difficult to believe that a title that starts "Ethiopia halts coffee exports.." can be in any way conceived as factually acceptable since it is blatantly false. Ethiopia has continued to export coffee every day since the legal actions taken by the regulators. There are more than 120 registered coffee exporters and this is an action concerning 6 companies. I also find it incredible that [another reporter] finds this to be a correct title since he knows firsthand that a statement that Ethiopia has halted coffee exports is patently untrue and extremely damaging to our industry. Unfortunately, neither you nor [the other reporter] are holding yourselves to the standards of truth that we hold you to as what should be responsible members of internationally recognized media. Please be assured that unless appropriate retractions and corrections are made, we will hold you accountable and pursue this matter in a more formal manner.

Best regards,

Eleni Gabre-Madhin
CEO
Ethiopia Commodity Exchange

The other reporter is from another news organization and for some reason was copied on the original request for a correction from me. He responded that he didn't think my post needed a correction, saying "If a newspaper writes a headline: 'Police Arrest Bank Robbers,' it's understood that the police may not necessarily have arrested all bank robbers, everywhere."

The New York Times corrected a post I had linked to that incorrectly said no coffee is leaving Ethiopia.

Ethiopian agribusiness expert Bruck Fikru, who appears to work for Fintrac, correctly points out that I should do more research.

For example, Fikru wrote, I was wrong in saying that "U.S. importers can't buy directly from the growers they prefer."

Yet I've heard from Seattle roasters who say they got beans out of Ethiopia just in the nick of time.

So who's getting coffee from Ethiopia these days, and how's it going?

Update: I wrote an article about this, and found that U.S. roasters and importers are worried that a new auction system in Ethiopia makes it almost impossible for them to buy coffee from the particular farmers whose beans they want. Some have had trouble getting any coffee from Ethiopia, although it is not clear whether the new auction system is to blame.

COURTESY OF MARK PENDERGRAST

Pendergrast didn't love coffee until he started writing a book about it and "developed a taste for really good coffee."

I called to ask what he plans to talk about, and coffee is very much on his mind again. After finishing a book on the Epidemic Intelligence Service (a little-known arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), Pendergrast will dig into a second edition of "Uncommon Grounds," which came out in 1999.

Mostly, he's updating it with events from the past decade, including what's happened with Starbucks, Fair Trade and Vietnam.

I quoted him in a story today about Green Mountain Coffee Roasters' move into Seattle. Pendergrast pointed out that Starbucks doesn't have a runner-up, like Coke has Pepsi, and he wondered whether Green Mountain might become Starbucks' No. 2.

Then he e-mailed this morning with a different idea: "McDonald's is probably a better candidate for a 'Pepsi' to Starbuck's 'Coke' than Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. The McCafe's are driving Starbucks crazy."

Pendergrast is a firehose of thoughts and data on coffee.

Ethiopia closed the warehouses of its six largest coffee exporters, accusing them of hoarding the crop as they wait for prices to rise, Bloomberg reported.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi warned last week that the government would "seize the coffee if it wasn't sold immediately," Bloomberg's Jason McLure reported.

Coffee is Ethiopia's biggest export, making it key to the country's struggling economy. Its coffee exports declined more than 10 percent in the first eight months of the country's fiscal year, which began July 8.

"We haven't hoarded anything," Yismashewa Seyoum, the commercial manager of Seid Yassin Pvt. Ltd., told Bloomberg. "We have proof that we haven't been hoarding so we are confident that the ban will be lifted."

The New York Times elaborated on the problem, saying that in December, the Ethiopian government "mandated that all coffee growers sell their crops through the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, to insure that all beans fetched an adequate price. Some antipoverty groups thought this would help all Ethiopiain coffee growers."

It also means that U.S. importers can't buy directly from the growers they prefer.

That could be a big deal to Starbucks, which has delayed the opening of its farmer support center in Ethiopia.

The extension of Coffee: The World In Your Cup to Sept. 7 is excellent news, especially if the Burke Museum also extends its coffee tasting and lecture schedule.

After all, that's how I learned that caffeine restricts blood flow to the brain, even though it seems to do the opposite.

It's also where you can experience an Ethiopian coffee ceremony without leaving Seattle.

The Burke, on the University of Washington campus, was going to close the exhibit on June 7, but decided to keep it open for locals and hopefully a bunch of tourists this summer. The exhibit will then tour to museums in Oregon, Iowa and Texas.

Here is a schedule of tasting days, including the coffee ceremonies.

And here is a schedule of the free Tuesday night lecture series, which kicks off April 7 with Mark Pendergrast, author of "Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World." You have to be interested in a guy who writes a coffee column for Wine Spectator magazine.

PHOTO: ANDREW WAITS/BURKE MUSEUM

Starbucks does not know when it will open a support center for coffee farmers in Ethiopia that was scheduled to open last year, according to spokeswoman Deb Trevino.

The economic slowdown, along with delays in opening a more regionally-focused center in Rwanda last year, have "made it challenging for us to move as quickly as we would like," she said in an e-mail. "We remain committed to opening a Farmer Support Center in Addis, but do not have an opening date to announce at this time."

The delay was originally reported by the Ethiopian news site Capital, which cited Starbucks' head of public relations, Vivek Varma, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

When Starbucks announced plans for the support centers in Ethiopia and Rwanda in late 2007, both were scheduled to open in 2008.

MASON SAGER/CAFFE VITA

Guatemalan farmer pouring coffee into a water bath to clean and separate the cherries.

Vita's folks regularly visit the people who grow the coffee they sell at four cafes in Seattle and one in Olympia.

Sager and Michael Hebb (formerly Hebberoy) of One Pot (a project that almost defies description, but basically organizes lovely dinners and other food experiences) were in the rainforest region of Santa Rosa, Guatemala, in January checking out the Finca Nuevo Vinas coffee that just arrived in Seattle.

Check out Sager's photos from Guatemala and Hebb's essays from that and other coffee farm visits.

Here's where Sager and Hebb are headed Sunday. Interesting that coffee is grown near the equator, but coffee consumption increases the further people live from the equator:

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And here's a map of Caffe Vita's coffeehouses in Seattle. Scroll the map to find the Olympia shop:

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DEAN RUTZ/THE SEATTLE TIMES

Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, spoke at Starbucks' shareholders meeting in 2007.

Issaquah-based Costco buys some of its own coffee for its Kirkland Signature brand, in addition to what it buys from Starbucks.

Turns out Sinegal introduced Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to the president of Rwanda, where Costco was buying some coffee.

"Jim introduced me to Paul Kagame, whom he had met, regarding whether or not Rwandan coffee -- the quality of it -- could be consistent with what Starbucks might need," Schultz recently confirmed. "So we went to Rwanda and began to work with the government and the coffee industry that was literally coming out of the ground post the genocide."

The relationship flourished, and Starbucks is now opening a coffee-farmer support center in Rwanda.

Kagame has spent the night at Schultz's home, and he spoke at Starbucks' 2007 shareholders meeting, saying how well the coffee company treats coffee farmers and how much he'd like to have a Starbucks shop in Rwanda.

Schultz said that on his last trip to Rwanda, some 10,000 people greeted him at one village to thank Starbucks for changing their lives.

"This is a great example of.... not having government interfering, but having government as a catalyst and as a friend, and all that money going to hands of people who need it the most," Schultz said.

Kagame deserves the credit, he said, for working with companies like Starbucks to help Rwandans.

Indeed, Kagame is known for courting Western businessmen to help pull Rwanda out of poverty, as mentioned in this article by The Economist. Sometimes those partnerships end in disappointment, The Economist said in another piece.

BRIAN WELLS

Coffee farmers water shade-grown plants in Ethiopia.

My story today about new coffee shops highlights the money and willpower it takes to get into the business. What I didn't talk about were the rich lives that many coffeehouse owners lead when they're not pulling shots.

Take Brian Wells, owner of Tougo Coffee. He recently opened a second coffeehouse, has plans for a third and was named one of Seattle's Sexiest: 2009 by The Stranger.

Somehow, Wells finds time for a photography business that took him to Ethiopia two years ago to visit coffee farmers with Caffe Vita founder Michael McConnell and Michael Hebberoy of One Pot.

Wells' favorite picture, above, shows men watering shade-grown coffee plants, which are under brown grass huts.

"I think it's about two guys really enjoying what they're doing and who are really at peace with their surroundings and know they are cultivating something the world is going to enjoy," he said.

Caffe Vita's McConnell never stops moving, either, opening Pike Street Fish Fry with Hebberoy last year and continuing to open Via Tribunali restaurants, including the upcoming Belltown location where Crocodile Cafe used to be.

Another coffeehouse owner with a photography business is Andre Helmstetter, who recently added cooking to a wide repertoire that includes software development and espresso making. The co-owner of MezzaLuna Bakery and Bistro in Judkins Park talks about his new business in this video by Seattle Times photographer Erika Schultz:

And here's a map of the coffee shops from the article:

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