Bay Area-based coffee trading company Royal Coffee has released an engrossing historical interpretation of the coffee family tree, called the World History and Geography of Arabica Cultivars.
The project includes two posters and a written companion that tell the story of cultivated coffee over hundreds of years, from the forests of Ethiopia to today.
The project was led by Chris Kornman, the director of education for The Crown: Royal Coffee’s Lab & Tasting Room in Oakland. Kornman is also the author of Green Coffee: A Guide for Roasters and Buyers.
The poster series ties together history, geography and genetic cultivation in a way that re-tells the complex story of arabica since the dawn of its commercialization to the present day. (Note: In most instances, the pieces use the term “cultivars” — a portmanteau of cultivated and variety — rather than the commonly misused (botanically speaking) but widely accepted term “variety.”
With one poster built generally around mapping, and the other offering a timeline, the visualizations combined provide geographical and historical contexts for more than 60 of the most common arabica cultivars.
Kornman said the guide project can be traced back at least eight years to his initial efforts to identify and debunk some historic myths regarding coffee cultivation, although more recent tastings and education work at The Crown precipitated the publishing project.
Royal contracted the data visualization firm infonewt.com in April of this year. Transforming a wealth of data from written sources into an Excel spreadsheet and then into something far more engaging was no small task, according to Kornman.
