Losing—the best motivator
Back a year ago, at the 2015 WBC in Seattle, Berg Wu’s second, competition staffers had changed the settings on his grinder while moving it. In the audience Wu’s wife Chee Lu could tell that its speed was clearly off. On stage, Wu knew it too. But he remained calm and completed all the steps in the process, smiling as he passed the cups to the judges.
While they were waiting for the scores to be announced, Wu walked backstage and calmly told his wife: “Honey, next year we’ll come to compete again.”
When the word came that Wu would not be competing in the final round that year, Lu was very upset, bursting into tears. Wu, on the other hand, calmly told her that he had performed fine, and that it was only the coffee grinder that was at issue. He’d have a chance again the next year.
In truth, Wu had been preparing for this summer’s competition for eight years.
When he first watched the 2008 WBC in Denmark, Wu was excited at seeing the superb performance of champions from around the world. “Everyone on stage was a world-class barista,” he recalls. “I was thinking how awesome it would be if one day I could be up on that stage.”
Since 2009, he has competed for a chance on that stage every year. He fell short the first two years, but since 2013 he has been crowned Taiwan champion three years in a row. In 2014, he competed for Taiwan at the WBC for the first time and earned seventh place, and the mistake in 2015 did not discourage him. Finally, in 2016, his innovative use of chilled portafilters and his technique of infusing essential oils into an expresso drink with nitrogen helped him earn the highest marks from the judges.
Wu personally visited many coffee plantations before selecting the Geisha coffee produced at the Finca Deborah farm in Panama for the competition.