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SWEETS & TREATS SHOW EXTRA www.gourmetnews.com n MAY 2019 n GOURMET NEWS ST 3 0 delightfully different delectables to sur- prise and delight customers every day. From handcrafting sweet treats in our retail store to becoming a specialty man- ufacturer famous for chocolate bacon products, we're attracting attention. In 2015, I created our signature chocolate-covered bacon, using a corpo- rate marketing background, a fondness for cooking shows plus an entrepreneur- ial spirit. This led to a manufacturing facility producing innovative wholesale goods – not only chocolate-covered bacon in two varieties but also four types of jumbo decadent cookies, fudge bites and our 'animal poo' line of chocolates available online and in select conven- ience stores. GN: What are you doing this year that's different from last year? LA: We unified our product line by launching OINKS, a distinctive brand for our chocolate-covered bacon prod- ucts, including applewood-smoked and jalapeño strips. For bite-sized treats, Chocolate Bacon Bites come in a resealable pouch for grab-and-go snacking. Our newest product, Chocolate Bacon Truffles, features smoked bacon bits combined in a dark chocolate-covered shell for a twist on the classic. We developed new packag- ing for bacon strips, bites and chocolate truffles. GN: What makes your company unique? LA: We're lucky to have a retail store, which features a chocolate shop in Golden, Colorado. It serves as a product laboratory for the manufacturing busi- ness. I feel like I'm in the classroom daily, exploring ways to improve my craft. Everything I've done has prepared me for this – I love retail – plus getting daily customer feedback was the 'a-ha Genesee Candy Land (Cont'd. from p. 1) moment' in becoming a manufacturer. In addition, Genesee Candy Land is the only food manufacturer in the United States to receive certification from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to process bacon strips enrobed in choco- late. Obtaining this designation was a rig- orous process and it sets us apart. GN: Where is your current product emphasis? LA: OINKS is an innovative, playful brand that blends sweet and savory tastes from foods already loved individ- ually to create uniquely sweet treats. Our chocolate-dipped bacon products have been wildly successful; bringing our best sellers together continues our evolution as chocolatiers. Our broader vision is to continue to disrupt the snacking category by blending loved foods to create new products. I want to dazzle a buyer when they're introduced to our products. I never want someone to roll their eyes and think 'I've seen this product four times already this week.' We strive to create deliciously different delectables with each and every product. GN: Is there a fun component to your unique product lines? LA: We get two reactions when people try our OINKS products for the first time: 'You did WHAT to bacon?!' Or, 'I love bacon and I love chocolate, so I'll love this.' It's fun to watch this reaction. We'll see this all day long at our booth. We are testing other loved food items that can handle the 'zip' of bacon, and will be testing these at our exhibit booth. Visit Genesee Candy Land at booth #5027. For more information, go to www.geneseecandyland.com, call 303.526.3073 or email geneseecandyland @gmail.com. Ethiopian Coffees Get Buzz at Good Food Awards By Greg Gonzales Retailers who look to awards and prizes as a guide to what's best in the world of specialty food are likely to notice that, once again, Ethiopian coffees dominated the category in this year's Good Food Awards. It's no fluke; over half the cate- gory's finalists this year consisted of Ethiopian varieties, and 50 of 86 total GFAs in this category have gone to cof- fees of the same origin. Even though there are plenty of reasons roasters and judges and coffee aficionados alike pre- fer Ethiopian coffees, the dominance of Ethiopian coffees in this awards competi- tion has become self-perpetuating, despite continued efforts from the GFA's coffee committee to level the playing field for other origins. "That's a big reason people are sub- mitting Ethiopians, is because of the proven success of them in this competi- tion – and it's definitely one of the rea- sons I submitted an Ethiopian to the com- petition," said Rob Bathe, Owner of Folly Coffee Roasters, a GFA finalist. "I talked to Tony Querio [Head Roaster] of Spyhouse Coffee, and he said if you're a roaster and you're looking to have suc- cess in the Good Food Awards, and you look at the past, and you see how many Ethiopian coffees are being awarded, you'd be almost foolish not to submit at least one Ethiopian coffee to the awards." Even though the awards have allowed for two submissions per brand, the rules changed this year so that each submission had to come from a different origin. As a result, there were 16 Ethiopian finalists this year, compared to 20 last year. However, Sandra Elisa Loofbourow, co-Chair on the GFA's coffee committee and Tasting Room Director at Royal Coffee, says that wasn't the only rules change for 2019. The awards also intro- duced "citizen judges," she said, or non- industry people who might prefer differ- ent flavor profiles than a coffee profes- sional. "There is something to be said for calibration within an industry, and the specialty coffee industry does prefer cer- tain flavor profiles, especially people who have been trained as cuppers and tasters," said Loofbourow. "They might have a preference for certain coffees. We try to get a diverse panel of judges from different regions of the U.S. and different portions of our industry precisely because we don't want the judges to have a distinct preference for one coffee or another." Even so, Loofbourow and a number of GFA finalists say that Ethiopian coffee has a number of advantages that tend to place it higher than coffees from other origins. Ethiopian coffees tend to land on U.S. soil by July or August, and the cup- ping ceremony is in September, so those beans tend to be fresher than others that have been stored in warehouses for sev- eral months, "slowly aging and losing some of their sparkling acidity," said Loofbourow. "The thing that factored in for Folly was, as you're choosing coffees, fresh- crop coffees tend to cup a lot better – especially when you're blind cupping and evaluating for taste," said Bathe. "My hypothesis would be that if that competition was at a different time of the year, you'd probably see increased pres- ence in other origins that have fresh-crop landing around that time." On top of that, Ethiopia coffee has a gold-standard reputation in the coffee world, known as the birthplace of coffee, which grows wild there. "I was talking to a producer from Brazil, we were talking about Ethiopian coffee, and he was blown away, speechless, that Ethiopian coffee grown wild can produce a coffee that is significantly better than he can," said Samuel Sabori, National Quality Control and Roasting Manager, and Buyer, for Intelligentsia Coffee, another GFA finalist. "It's kind of like asking why pinot noir is so great in Burgundy – it developed there. Though not all Ethiopian beans are heirloom, it has a lot of genetic diversity that a lot of coffee- producing countries in the Americas don't have." Nick Visconti, Founder of Drink Coffee Do Stuff, another GFA finalist, said Ethiopian coffees have a natural complexity of sugar and acidity that's totally unique, and that those characteris- tics are more pronounced on a cupping table. "I personally think there are incredible coffees that ought to be high- lighted from around the world," he said. "However, it's maybe a little easier to experience the nuances of an Ethiopian coffee than it may be to experience those same characteristics of a Latin or South American coffee. On one hand, Ethiopia produces some of the best coffees in the world, and on the other hand, it's just that they stand out compared to other cof- fees." Loofbourow said the GFAs took steps this year to mitigate this particu- lar problem, which she calls contextual cupping. "If you were to put a really outstanding washed Ethiopian coffee next to even a superb Guatemalan cof- fee, it's likely that the Ethiopian coffee would overshadow it. And it's not nec- essarily that the Ethiopian coffee is inherently better than the Guatemalan; it's that the Guatemalan would taste better paired with another Guatemalan coffee," she said. "This year, my co- Chair and I did origin- and processing- based cupping tables for the blind tast- ing, wherein we put all the Central American coffees together, all the South Americans and all the Indonesians and all the natural Ethiopians and washed Ethiopians all on their own tables. As a result, we got a significant increase in non-Ethiopian coffees in the finalists list." So it's not as if GFA officials are unaware of the problem. "It's a constant point of contention. Last year, after the tasting, there was a bit of an eruption on social media regarding this issue," said Loofbourow. "As co-Chair, I and my other co-Chair, Tovara Salley, are work- ing really hard with the means we have to make this a fair and just event. And it's true that there's a prevalence of Ethiopian coffees, and it's true that there's only so much we can do about it, but we are implementing as many tools as we can to give all the coffees from all the roasters a fighting chance – and make sure the finalists are some of the best coffees in the nation." But again, one of the biggest contrib- utors to this issue is the self-perpetuating factor, that nearly half of all submissions are Ethiopian. If the industry as a whole decided to celebrate non-Ethiopian cof- fees by submitting two coffees from other regions, then by default there would be more winners from non- Ethiopian origins. However, then the world might miss out on fantastic coffees from the very birthplace of coffee. Therein lies the dilemma. "It's a collaborative effort, and I wonder if folks in our industry realize that it's within their power to help fix this problem," Loofbourow said. "I hope peo- ple who are interested in fixing this prob- lem reach out to the coffee committee, because we're looking for help!" Good Food Awards officials and next year's entrants might look to beer for an example of how to judge and sub- mit coffees. Bathe, who used to sell and judge beer in the craft beer industry, explained that beers are judged per spe- cific style, where coffee is judged as one large category. "If I submit an IPA and a stout, those two beers are going to be judged very dif- ferently. When you submit a coffee, it's judged against one kind of scale, one platform," he said. Whatever the solution may be, it's still uncertain. "This is a tricky position to put a roaster in – they obviously want to have at least the opportunity to win a Good Food Award, and it feels like if you don't submit an Ethiopian coffee you're sort of negating any possibility of placing," Loofbourow said. Some ideas for next year, she added, include a sustainability committee to address cer- tification requirements regarding Fair Trade and organic labels. "We don't cur- rently have a solution for that, but we are working on one," she said. "We're working actively to improve our system, because it's not perfect. There are flaws. ...We don't want to keep upheaving the rules, but we do want to keep improving the system."