Bean by BEAN
Peggy Thompson-Hudon takes
her coffee expertise to Honduras

Peggy Thompson-Hudon stands with the Cup of
Excellence winner, Luis Enrique Vega.

Story by Janet Cook
Photos submitted by Peggy Thompson-Hudon
July 4, 2007

Peggy Thompson-Hudon found herself winging her way to Central America not once but twice in four months this year for two diverse missions involving her passion: coffee.

In January Thompson-Hudon, who owns Hood River Coffee Company with her husband, Mark, spent two and a half weeks in Honduras volunteering her time with the Honduran Coffee Institute under a program run by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Her mission was to teach classes on roasting and cupping (tasting to evaluate a coffee’s aroma and flavor profile) to various groups of people involved in Honduran coffee production.

The first group she taught involved representatives from the Honduran Coffee Institute, which has offices throughout the country that help to implement programs for coffee farmers and producers.

“That group was more business people,” Thompson-Hudon said. The next group was actual coffee farmers from throughout Honduras.

“They all had high hopes and high dreams of doing more with their farms,” Thompson-Hudon said. Honduras is a poor country, but its climate and geography hold great promise for growing excellent coffee, she said. However, many farmers sell their beans raw — which means they get little return for their work. Many coffee farmers have never seen coffee beans roasted, much less have access to a roaster or knowledge of how to do it themselves.

The third group involved students of the Honduran Coffee Institute who were already learning the process of roasting and cupping.

“There was definitely the desire among the third group to start their own businesses,” Thompson-Hudon said. She told them about how she and her husband started Hood River Coffee Company from scratch and have spent the past 17 years working hard to make it successful.

“It gave them hope that even in the land of opportunity — the U.S. — it’s still pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” she said.

Colorful ripe coffee beans, called cherries,
sit in a bag after being picked.

After her teaching seminars were over, Thompson-Hudon spent several days touring farms in different parts of the country, where she got to learn about the diverse types of coffee grown in the various regions — and where she continued her teaching as well.

One problem she saw over and over with farmers who did have a roaster was that they tended to overload it with beans — resulting in inconsistency and often burned beans.

“I was able to recommend to them that instead of taking 30 minutes to roast so much, break it up into two batches roasted for 15 minutes,” she said. It would take the same amount of time, she pointed out, and result in much greater consistency. She even did experiments with the farmers, over-roasting a small batch of beans, under-roasting another batch, and then doing one batch in between.

“Then we cupped them all, so they had the experience of what each one actually tasted like,” Thompson-Hudon said.

That lesson — consistency — was the biggest “take-home” message she tried to convey on her trip, Thompson-Hudon said. Creating consistency with their coffee will help bring greater returns both for farmers and others involved in Honduran coffee production.

“If they don’t have standards to go by, then there’s no reference point,” she said.

II

Thompson-Hudon had been back in Hood River only a week when she was invited to be a judge for the Cup of Excellence competition to be held in May in Honduras. The competition is run by the nonprofit Alliance for Coffee Excellence and, since its inception in 1999, has hosted programs in countries throughout Central and South America.

The goal is to recognize coffee producers in those countries who are growing and roasting high quality coffee. Competition winners have their current coffee lots auctioned online, bringing income and recognition that tends to boost entire regions of coffee producers in often-impoverished areas.

At first, Thompson-Hudon was hesitant. “To be an international judge for the Cup of Excellence is a huge responsibility,” she said. But she decided it was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up — especially since she’d fallen in love with Honduras and its people on her first trip there.

So in May, Thompson-Hudon returned to Honduras as one of 16 international judges who spent five days tasting, smelling and evaluating every nuance of 53 different coffees. (Initially, 450 farmers entered the contest; national judges had narrowed the competition to 53 finalists before the international judges arrived.)

Each cupping session involved nine different coffees, each one of which the judges evaluated for a range of criteria.

“It was a real methodical process,” Thompson-Hudon said. After a couple of days, the competition had been narrowed to 26 coffees. By the last day, the judges cupped the top 10 coffees and ranked them.

“It was really a very cool experience,” Thompson-Hudon said. And despite her initial hesitation at being unqualified to be an international judge, her number-one pick ended up being the winner of the competition.

Judge Yuko from Japan smells an entry in the
Cup of Excellence competition.

“That was gratifying,” she said. Twenty-four coffees from the Honduras competition will be auctioned internationally on July 10.

Thompson-Hudon said the standard price for coffee bought from producers currently is about $2 per pound. The Cup of Excellence competition can bring producers more than $10 per pound.

“Honduras needs this,” she said. “It inspires these people to better their crops. It creates relationships with buyers and it helps promote their businesses for the long term.”

Thompson-Hudon would like to go back to Honduras at some point.

“I’d like to talk to the people I taught and see how they’re doing,” she said. She’s also working to have one of the Honduran Coffee Institute members who assisted her on her first trip come to Hood River to do an internship at Hood River Coffee Company this fall.

“I think there’s going to be a long-term relationship with me and Honduras,” she said.