Sunday, June 10, 2007

Making the Coffee Connection

Former U.S. Ambassador H. Douglas Barclay used his Central American connections to help a Central New York company tap into America's growing interest in luxury coffee.

Barclay, the former ambassador to El Salvador, facilitated a trip by owners of the Paul deLima Co. Inc. to that country in 2005. As a result of the business connections they made and the extraordinary cup of coffee they had on the trip, Paul deLima bought the entire crop of ultra luxury coffee beans from Exportadora Pacas Martinez.

"It is extraordinary coffee," Barclay said of the Pacas Bourbon sold by Paul deLima. "We went around and had all these tastings (during his time as ambassador). It's like drinking wine; you can actually tell the differences. I like strong coffee and you can make this really strong. You know you've drunk something."

"Coffee is following the wine industry; there's a lot of snobbishness," said W.J. "Bud" Drescher Jr., one of the family members who owns Drescher Management Group Inc. The Clay management company owns Paul deLima and Warner Energy LLC, a renewable-energy company.

Paul deLima roasts 12 million pounds of coffee a year in more than 25 varieties. It is concentrating its efforts over the next six months on introducing the Pacas Bourbon coffee to the U.S. market. The company has enlisted students to go door-to-door selling the specialty coffee for an introductory price of $10 per bag through June. Door-to-door sales started last week in Central New York.

"I think we have a great secret," Drescher said. "Once they taste it, we think we've pretty much got a customer."

Barclay downplays his role in bringing the Dreschers to El Salvador. After all, it's the ambassador's duty to encourage trade between the U.S. and other countries, he said.

Barclay's daily commute from his home near Pulaski to law offices in Syracuse along Interstate 81 passes the Paul deLima coffee roasting plant in Cicero. He knew of the company's reputation, and kept it in mind when he began his duties as ambassador to El Salvador in 2003, Barclay said.

El Salvador has long produced coffee, with its volcanic soil and high mountains producing some of the finest beans in the world. So it only made sense to connect Paul deLima with coffee plantations there, he said.

Salvadoran coffee lost its market during its civil war from 1980 to 1992. More recently, cheap commercial beans have flooded the global market, forcing the price of coffee to drop to 30-year-lows, according to the USAID's Web site on El Salvador. USAID is an independent government agency designed to foster economic growth, agriculture and trade, health and democracy in foreign countries.

By www.syracuse.com