Original subtitles

Listen closely.

It's the world waking up...

to coffee.

I need coffee.

It's hard to imagine a day without it.

And I'm not alone.

We drink coffee across all corners of the planet,

nearly three billion times a day.

A global addiction.

The siren song of coffee holds a curious place in our lives.

Familiar, yet mysterious.

Its story still largely unknown.

But every cup has a story to tell.

Let's go to a place that's seen the best

and the worst of what that cup of coffee can be.

We'll trace the path of a singular bean,

from its cradle in the hills of Rwanda

to a roaster in the American South,

to see the symphony of human endeavor, of toil and sweat,

of skilled hands that pick, sort and roast.

All of the lives intertwined

in bringing us that fleeting moment of joy.

The everyday miracle of coffee.

The story of coffee is less a tale of tastes

than it is a history of stimulation.

That includes the mythical story of coffee's origins.

As legend has it,

a ninth-century Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi

was roaming the cloud forests when he came upon his flock

snacking on a small red fruit.

They were restless, animated, nearly levitating off the forest floor.

The bewildered goat herder gathered the fruit

and brought it to a nearby monastery.

The monks roasted and boiled the mysterious buds

and found themselves possessed by this new religious fervor.

The miracle of coffee was born.

What happens when that first sip of coffee hits our lips?

Dopamine floods the brain.

Our hearts beat faster.

Our central nervous system awakens.

Make no mistake about it,

coffee is a mind-, body- and mood-altering substance,

a vehicle for caffeine, the most widely consumed psychoactive drug in the world.

Our addiction has made coffee one of the most traded commodities on earth,

cultivated across nearly half the globe.

Our thirst for this ingredient, reshaping the economies,

landscapes and lives of entire nations.

Few places have seen such a spectacular rebirth as Rwanda.

In the span of 30 years,

coffee in Rwanda has gone from being a source of pain and oppression

to the engine behind one of the most remarkable economic transformations

of the 21st century.

How is it?

Not bad.

It's the highest quality.

We're going to plant a new coffee variety.

Near Murunda?

Near the foothills.

When coffee was introduced in Rwanda,

my family was among the first coffee farmers.

I inherited growing coffee from my parents.

When I was young, I remember that we had three small plantations...

with around 1,000 coffee trees.

At that time, I was sure the only way to earn money was growing coffee.

So, when I had Willy,

I decided that I should teach him to grow coffee,

so he knows how to look after coffee, the work it takes,

learns the benefits and learns to love it.

So when I grow old and can't do it anymore myself,

he can take over the tradition.

I never dreamt of doing this business.

But my father, he's that person who can make you love something

and learn more through the process.

Rwandan soil is very good for coffee.

Plus the altitude, because coffee from the higher mountains is better.

These branches, a flush with cherries,

each cradling the future of your next cappuccino in its flesh,

because coffee is a fruit,

and the beans we brew are its seeds.

Each cherry ripens at its own pace,

even on the same branch.

The most dedicated specialty coffee growers

will revisit the same tree repeatedly over weeks,

favoring quality over quantity.

In Rwanda, all the coffee picking is done by hand.

They pick only ripe, red cherries.

If one picker mixes red, yellow,

and another picker picks only ripe, red cherries,

the quality in the cup will be different.

So you see, that's the difference with Rwandan specialty coffee,

the human effort.

From the moment the cherry is picked, the clock starts ticking.

And time shows no mercy

towards the delicate fruit that can spoil within hours.

The journey of coffee is as varied as it is challenging.

Coffee plants thrive in the heart of the coffee belt,

a collection of countries hugging the equator.

For these places, coffee is more than an ingredient.

It's a global commodity bought and sold like steel, cotton or crude oil.

Its journey from seed to cup is dictated by efficiency, consistency,

and the ever-shifting tides of the marketplace,

always thirsty for more coffee.

This relentless demand places a huge burden

on the people behind our daily ritual.

Put it on the scale.

Which makes the work they do

to keep every link in the coffee chain intact all the more miraculous.

The difference between a decent brew and the finest cup

comes down to human touch.

A mind-blowing 30 to 40 different people,

each a master of one specific leg of the journey.

And every palm it passes through

is a crossroads between success and failure.

The process here is incredible.

Once the cherries are brought to the washing station,

they're depulped to separate their fruit from the bean inside.

Then they're fermented to remove the sticky mucilage and develop flavor.

Next, the coffee is graded.

Directed to water channels where lighter beans float,

while the heavier, higher quality ones sink and move through.

Finally, the beans are laid out on long, raised beds

to dry under the blazing sun.

As you can see, it's not about expensive equipment.

It's the eyes, the hands

and the collective knowledge of the people that make the difference.

From this fine-tuned process,

emerges what many consider to be some of the best coffee anywhere.

Lemon, oranges, cashew nuts, and chocolates.

Those are the common fruits that many people find

in their coffee from this region.

"The farmers, when they deliver coffee, they want to know, "How is our coffee?

How did it go? What did I miss?

"What do I have to improve next time while harvesting or sorting?"

Every region, we have to give them feedback about their coffee.

I want the community in Mahembe, the coffee farmers, to live a good life

equal to the efforts they put into farming.

We're all connected through the products we consume.

Coffee's a great example.

I liken it to a very colorful quilt

that stitches people together in a way that they wouldn't otherwise.

Originally from Rwanda,

Arthur Karuletwa has made it his life's mission

to fight for the people who produce our coffee.

Nowadays, the gap between farm and table is a void that keeps expanding.

Most coffee is destined for obscurity,

severed from its roots, its history and the hands that nurtured it.

A story of disconnect in our relentless quest for convenience.

But that convenience comes at a cost,

especially to the farmers

tasked with keeping the world caffeinated at bargain prices,

always asked to do more for less,

even in the face of an ever-shifting climate

and the push and pull of the global market.

And now farmers are starting to walk away from an industry that's failed them

at a time when we drink more coffee than ever.

But there is a road map for improvement.

Rwanda is carving out a path.

The cooperative model favored here can be a lifeline

promising a better livelihood for the people who deserve it.

Much of that is thanks to Arthur.

A man who, in the early 2000s,

was already laying the bricks for specialty coffee in Rwanda.

Arthur is one of those rare kinds of people

who catalyzes real change.

It's a story about our belief in the power of human connection,

about what happens when we replace labels with faces

and how global transformation starts when people have a one-to-one connection.

His mission is to trace the beans' journey from tree to cup,

ensuring that all the contributors in the coffee chain

are recognized and rewarded for their efforts.

Hey, Justin! How are you doing?

- I am fine. - Long time!

- Thanks for paying us a visit. - Yeah!

Tell me about your relationship with your farmers.

Our goal is to help educate them as much as possible,

so they can make the best coffee.

That's valuable information for me to have to take to the markets.

As a Rwandan, I take pride in selling coffee abroad

and delivering it to those who truly appreciate and enjoy it.

The immense pride it brings me is beyond words.

When I work with producers like Mahembe, I'm diving into a lot of personal aspects.

How much are you paying farmers?

How are you treating them?

You can't have a quality coffee on the table

and not expect to see a quality of life for the people who grow it

and the communities that are sustained by it.

Justin and Willy, they've nurtured the community in a way that

quality of life is important to 'em.

It is a beautiful thing that deserves amplification.

Coffee isn't native to Rwanda.

In fact, it's indigenous to only a small part of Ethiopia and South Sudan.

So, how did it come to dominate so many countries around the globe?

Its spread outside Africa and the Middle East

began in the 1600s with an unlikely hero,

a trader named Baba Budan,

who strapped seven fresh coffee beans to his stomach

before smuggling them from Yemen back to his native India.

Soon, coffee was being cultivated across Asia.

As coffee production spread eastward, coffee consumption moved ever westward

from Mocha to Mecca, Cairo to Constantinople

and eventually to Venice,

where coffee bubbled up in 1615 marking its arrival in Europe.

It replaced beer and wine as the breakfast beverage of choice.

Not surprisingly, productivity skyrocketed.

For the power brokers,

coffee's explosive popularity begged a larger question:

why purchase it, when they could control the supply?

The Dutch led the way,

installing plantations in their colonies in the East Indies, notably Java.

Other countries quickly followed suit.

Around the world from Brazil to Africa to the Caribbean,

European empires forced their colonies to grow their commodity crop.

Rwanda was first colonized by Germany and then Belgium.

I don't think anybody knew Rwanda produced coffee

because coffee went straight to Belgium.

Not a single acknowledgement that it came from Rwanda.

It was grown, harvested, processed and picked with this slave mentality.

The colonial introduction of coffee stipulated three laws.

One: grow it.

It didn't matter if you had a ten-by-ten backyard

that you grew your food crops in.

You had to find space for the cash crop.

Two: never cut the tree down without getting permission.

And the third was: coffee was illegal to consume.

We were mandated not to drink it.

Now, imagine what that does to a nation and a people.

The burden and pain of producing a product

that you can't rely on economically or even socially.

For most of its coffee-growing history,

Rwanda was forced to focus on quantity, not quality.

Rwandan farmers had no choice

but to sell their coffee at the lowest commodity price.

But in the late 1980s, the world's coffee prices crashed.

Producing countries slipped into devastating poverty.

Few were hit as hard as Rwanda,

already reeling from a growing tide of ethnic division.

The ensuing years saw political unrest and economic desperation,

which culminated in the 1994 genocide.

Extremists from the dominant Hutu ethnic group

began a 100-day killing spree to rid the country of minority Tutsis.

Upwards of 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days.

It was mass murder on a scale not seen since the Second World War.

During the genocide, they burned everything.

Even the coffee farm was burned.

The house was demolished.

There were 27 households

on that hill where we lived, more than 200 people.

All those households were of the same family.

Only four of us survived.

My grandpa and grandma passed away during the genocide.

My father went to Kigali, did some little business in transport.

But deep, deep down, he had that feeling of coming back

and doing what his father used to do.

After 1994, I spent the next couple years

trying to figure out why did the genocide happen?

How could it happen that fast?

I came to the conclusion that at the heart of it all was poverty.

That is the brink at which these commodities, like coffee,

took my country into in 1994.

Coffee, amongst other things, of course, had a role to play.

Its introduction and its processes sustained this poverty cycle.

But in the aftermath of the genocide,

we also realized that coffee was a tool to reconcile.

Forty-four. Forty-four, Majya!

Yes!

Watch out, the sack may fall on top of you.

- This time it is thirty-two. - All right!

Coffee is the product that's going to fill the void.

- Number? - Forty-five.

There only used to be three washing stations in Rwanda.

So we went from three to 330 around the country.

- Number? - Thirty!

So that we could have 330 places

where people could come together,

bonded around a common goal.

Fifteen.

All right!

We knew that was the beginning of healing.

We picked coffee in silence,

we brought it to the mills in silence,

but we processed it in conversation.

And by the time we shipped it, we made sure we were embracing each other.

Tupac has an incredible song where he says that

a rose is growing out of concrete.

That is Rwandan coffee.

With coffee, we see our humanity through an illuminating lens.

Both the darkness and the light.

By working together, shoulder to shoulder

to improve the quality of their coffee and processes,

thousands of Rwandan farmers found a path out of poverty.

Every country that grows coffee experiences its perils and declines,

but what happened in Rwanda really gave hope

that coffee could be a catalyst for a better future.

The farmers and producers of Rwanda

have undertaken the first huge piece of coffee's transformation.

But the journey of these beans is far from over.

It will go through a vast network of brokers and auctioneers,

burlap sacks hustled onto bikes,

loaded into the backs of trucks and trains,

and shipped in cargo holds by the millions across the planet.

Some of these Rwandan coffee beans are on their way to Sydney.

Others to Singapore.

As for our beans, they're destined for a special corner of the American South.

Roasters have a lot of responsibility,

but every roasting book that you read,

it's like, "You've gotta start with great coffee."

You can't make bad coffee good.

You gotta start with great quality.

Little Waves is our coffee roastery

where we really focus on creating relationships

with coffee producers all around the world.

We feel that coffee, when it shows up to our doorstep,

it has its own essence, it has its own flavor profile,

and it's up to us to get the best flavor out of it.

An expert roaster can elevate good beans into the extraordinary.

But given the high heat and the heavy machinery,

seconds can separate capturing the sweet spot of our beans

or ruining the hard work of the dozens who brought them to this point.

Within a mere 12 minutes it takes to roast a bean

from pale to golden brown

lies entire weather systems, people's hopes and dreams

and countless hours of work.

You could overdevelop it,

where it's kind of flat and papery.

You could under-develop it,

where you're lacking body, lacking sweetness,

literally just tasting like grass and hay.

Every step of the way, everything has to be perfect.

Personally, I prefer my roast light,

teeming with fruity notes and acidity, hints of raspberry and lavender.

For me, a good coffee is like a great glass of wine.

It might seem far-fetched to some,

but when you consider all the people,

all the effort that goes into making a good cup of coffee,

it's hard not to see the connection.

- Hey, Arthur! - Hey.

- How's it going? - Hey. Welcome to Durham.

Thanks for having me.

To get to this point, this little fruit has crossed continents,

traversed oceans and passed through the hands of dozens of people.

It's got that nice beautiful greenish-blueish hue.

It's a way of saying,

"I'm here, I'm clean, I've been well-processed."

The stories it could tell are fascinating.

Every hand that touches coffee adds to its value.

But like so much of the food we consume,

the value is rarely passed back.

Coffee farmers keep just 1% of the price you pay for your cup.

A disparity that people in the specialty coffee world

are hoping to improve.

The conversation that is happening in our industry is,

how do we share the risks

so that producers have a lot more say and a lot more protection?

Coffee reveals its true beauty if it's equitable.

We have to be rewarding everyone behind that coffee.

That starts with a farmer being recognized and acknowledged and seen.

Twenty years ago, specialty coffee was a niche.

Now it's a $25 billion business

and it's expected to double by 2030,

proof that people are willing to pay for quality.

Coffee has never been more delicious than it is today.

And so much of that hinges on the brew.

If you tried coffee 500 years ago

in the early coffee houses of Europe and the Middle East,

you probably wouldn't recognize it.

Boiled, bitter, over-extracted,

the quality of the coffee wasn't the point.

The ritual, the revelry, the buzz,

that's what kept the coffee brewing.

It wasn't until the 20th century

that coffee technology began to reshape the drink

and the places where people drink it.

In 1908, a German housewife invented the pour over,

a method still used today for a lighter, more delicate flavor.

My favorite, actually.

Only a few years earlier,

two Italian engineers had come up with a high-pressure system

to filter hot water through finely-ground beans

for a faster, stronger cup

giving us the gift of espresso.

The drinks and techniques kept coming:

latte, cappuccino, AeroPress, frappéd, instant,

iced, frothed, shaken, pressed, infused, sweetened.

A coffee order for every season, every mood and every person.

An individual expression of us.

If you drink coffee every day, you are already making an impact.

We all do it, unbeknownst to ourselves.

It's really hard to consume a product enough times

without building an inquisition about it.

And usually the first inquisition is, "Where is this from?"

I perceive how you brew coffee,

paying homage to where it's grown and the people who grow it.

Its flora, its fauna...

the smell of the red dirt after a slight rain.

The flowerings of surrounding crops.

Children laughing, women singing.

What we can learn from coffee is that the things we consume matter so much.

Seismic change can happen...

through the ease of just drinking something.

So how do you take your coffee?

Slow-dripped in a quiet café?

Pushed through a pod in your kitchen?

Or maybe crafted by the hands of an expert?

That's the beauty of coffee.

There's no wrong way.

But what if every so often we do more than drink coffee?

We try to understand and appreciate, for a few fleeting moments,

the people, the skill, the collaboration that go into its creation.

This one simple act

can make the daily grind a bit more meaningful.

Maybe even...

a bit more miraculous.