In taste, nothing distinguishes it from an equivalent coffee from Colombia arriving by container.
Not even a hint of spray and yet it was on a sailboat that this grand cru made the trip.
Forty-five days aboard a schooner that left Santa Marta in the north of the country last January to reach Bordeaux with twenty-two tonnes of coffee beans, chocolate and rum on board.
This “sailing” coffee has been sold since the beginning of May in a limited edition by the coffee roaster Cafés Di-Costanzo, based in L'Isle-Jourdain, in the Gers, and in Toulouse.
But for the leaders of this company of eighteen people, which is oriented towards “specialty coffees” with traced origins and operating methods, the approach is not just marketing.
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“Lowering your carbon footprint when you're a roaster isn't easy.
Coffee necessarily comes from afar.
When we bought the company in 2007 at the age of 28, it hadn't crossed our minds even though we have been very committed from the start in terms of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility).
We roast our coffees with electricity and green gas, we operate with returnable crates for deliveries and we are very advanced in sorting.
For us, transport by sail is an additional step”, explains Emilie Gavanier, manager of Cafés Di-Costanzo.
For this first experiment carried out with its coffee importer, Girondin Belco and the Breton shipowner Towt, specializing in carbon-free merchant transport, it was the Avonturr that criss-crossed the Atlantic.
This two-masted schooner, built in 1920 in the Netherlands, has already had several crossings behind her, but she has never carried so much coffee.
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The coffee in question is a certified organic arabica, produced in the foothills of the Perija mountains, in the Valle del Cesar, in northern Colombia, by the seventeen farmers of the Entre Sierras association.
For Cafés Di-Costanzo, which imports some 150 tonnes of green coffee per year, the next shipments via Towt are not expected for at least two years.
The company must indeed wait for the shipping company to receive the first of its four cargo ships, 70 meters long and capable of transporting up to 1,000 tonnes of goods.
Like the big names in chocolate, wine and spirits, she has already reserved her place in the holds of the future fleet.
https://www.leparisien.fr/environnement/marine-marchande-cette-voile-permet-deconomiser-up-40-de-carburant-24-01-2022-P2Z4R7UXMFHPVGTF6FHGH2QAO4.php
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