What is the coffee harvest?

The harvest is the annual process of picking ripe coffee cherries from the trees. It's among the most labour-intensive stages of production and has more direct influence on quality than almost anything else - because the ripeness of the cherry at picking shapes everything that follows.

Three main approaches: selective hand-picking (returning to the same trees repeatedly as cherries ripen progressively - the most quality-focused method), strip picking (removing all fruit from a branch at once, faster but mixing ripeness), and mechanical harvesting (used at scale in Brazil, efficient but with the same mixed-ripeness trade-offs as strip picking).

The difference shows in the cup. A lot built from selectively picked, fully ripe cherry starts its processing journey with an enormous advantage. Green coffee quality can be managed downstream, but it can't be fully recovered once underripe or overripe cherry has entered the system.