Three Questions with Denis Mialocq of Belco

Denis Mialocq spends most of his days teaching others about the complexities of coffee, from gustatory explorations to environmental, economic and social issues. 

The training manager at green coffee trading company Belco in Bordeaux, France, Mialocq leads the Belco Coffee School, coupling his expertise in coffee with skills as an instructor that he first developed while working on a PhD in finance.  

It was during the PhD program that Mialocq tasted a coffee that changed the trajectory of his career forever. 

“The coffee disturbed me,” he told DCN. “It was a washed Yirgacheffe in a Chemex, and I hadn’t heard about this method or this profile, so I bought the coffee and a Chemex.” 

With no barista experience, Mialocq struggled to recreate the tasting experience at home. He bought books, watched videos on YouTube and eventually he began to notice an improvement in his skills. 

“My passion for coffee grew,” said Mialocq. “It was more like an obsession.” 

He began buying coffees just to taste them, then started making friends with coffee professionals in Bordeaux.

“I wanted to taste with them,” said Mialocq, “to understand the vocabulary, the language of a coffee professional.”

This network led Mialocq to his first job in coffee as the assistant roaster at Bordeaux-based specialty coffee company L’Alchimiste. He worked there for five years, eventually in quality control and as a green coffee buyer, before spotting an opportunity at Belco that could combine his coffee passion with his experience in instruction. 

With Belco, Mialocq now evaluates green coffee while conducting training sessions for wholesale roasting clients. He also leads thought-provoking programming focused on the coffee value chain and other social and economic complexities associated with coffee. 

“It’s important to know about the value chain of coffee, to have a better understanding and awareness of the issues in this value chain,” he said. “I think my job is to give some perspective to the customers, not to give education, but to discuss and question things. I think that is my skill: to question. I think it’s very important not to be normative about coffee or life.”

Here’s more from DCN’s recent conversation with Denis Mialocq…

What about coffee excites you most?

It’s tasting the coffee. I love tasting with new people, but I also love to taste alone. The human part of tasting is very fascinating — there are a lot of gazes and expectations. Each person is different, so it’s interesting to see the interactions over one cup of coffee. I love to speak about coffee — to understand each other. Maybe we are not from the same culture, but we can understand each other for one cup. These kinds of meetings are amazing. 

I love to understand the small parts that can influence you when you are tasting, like the mood of the day or the coffee you had before the one you are tasting. For me, it’s not about judging the coffees, but observing them because all coffees are very good. 

When I’m alone, I love to start my day cupping coffee. Being alone in silence allows me to [more deeply] understand the coffee and all the variations of the cup. 

What about coffee troubles you most?

For me, it’s what is quality in coffee? What is quality today? With new, innovative processes like intense high aromatic profiles, it’s hard to have a standard to understand. I love Ethiopian coffee. An Ethiopian washed cup of coffee is not an average coffee. It’s an amazing coffee, but it’s hard to understand the more simple cups because of the innovative processes. I’m excited about this part of coffee because they’re moving forward the aromatic profiles. It’s just hard to have a scale that’s very defined. 

What would you be doing if it weren’t for coffee?

I love people, and I love tasting products, so I have two ideas — a psychologist to understand and to help people with a cup of coffee, of course. And the second is a cheesemaker.

Is there someone in the coffee industry who inspires you? Let DCN’s editors know here. 

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