Roastery brews up coffee 'cupping' in Traverse City

TRAVERSE CITY -- We're checking for undertones such as caramel or berries as we stick our noses deep into a cup and whiff, then, as instructed, take a big slurp that spreads liquid over all parts of the tongue. Do we detect chocolate, and if so, more like Baker's, or Swiss, or something more like legumes?

It would be easier to figure it all out if we could just get that slurp down, without fear of burning our tongues.

For this isn't wine we're evaluating on this Friday afternoon at the Higher Grounds Trading Company in the Village at Grand Traverse Commons; it's a fair trade cup of joe.

A trio of the curious -- a songwriter, a music promoter and me, a writer -- have dropped in for a free one-hour, hands-on lesson in how these coffee beans were evaluated and rated by the fair-trade cooperative that bought them. And we're taking the class beneath colorful photographs of the villagers who may have picked the very beans used in these coffee samples.

It's just one way Higher Grounds and other businesses in the former Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane complex are working to engage customers eager for a deeper understanding about the food and drink they're sampling in their travels.

"There's a huge movement of interest in beer, with home brewing and wine making, and we're finding the same thing to be true with coffee," said Jody Treter, who owns the sunny roastery and coffee bar with her husband, Chris. "People want to know more about what it is and where it comes from -- from the tree to the cup."

The farm-to-table connection has a strong history in this budding residential and retail village that once housed a mental hospital but today has a distinctive Italian village feel. Trattoria Stella, which opened in 2004, was ahead of its time when it listed atop the menu the names of farmers who had provided the maple syrup or eggs or honeycrisps.

Wine appreciation is part of every tasting at the new Left Foot Charley winery, located in the same former laundry building as Higher Grounds. Winemaker Bryan Ulbrich gets his grapes from eight estates upon which farmers grow specifically for his wines, and he loves to explain how the differences in slopes and soil types and microclimates are critical to his award-winning whites.

But the connection between plantation and the cup is unusually direct, even poignant, at Higher Grounds.

The Treters met on an alternative college spring break trip in a Mexican orphanage, and together pursued master's degrees in organizational management with a focus on international social change. Several times a year, they take their connection with growers to another level by taking customers along on fair trade tours to Chiapas, Mexico, or Colombia or Ethiopia. Between outings such as wildlife safaris, the coffee drinkers meet villagers who benefit from the higher fair trade prices they pay and by additional fundraising efforts that have financed water systems for entire villages.

The connection with growers comes through, too, in stories Chris tells throughout the weekly coffee "cupping" demonstration. He's done similar trainings in villages throughout the world.

He asks us to see what we detect by sniffing (then tasting) four cups of coffee -- first as dry grounds, then steeped in boiling water. We call out our unschooled observations, encouraged by Chris's kind manner even when we describe what will turn out to be his favorite as "bad diner coffee." When the water is added, we confess, the "diner coffee" tastes s rich and green, fruity and spicy. And then there are the lattes, flavored by homemade syrups that start with fresh ginger or organic vanilla beans.

"We decided early on," Jody said, "that if we had a good heart but our product wasn't good, people wouldn't come more than once."