Continuity is in the eye of the beholder. Commodity is a matter of perception. Coffee can be Folgers or it can be terroir: the regions where beans are grown span continents and microclimates, lumping them together under a single label is as silly as lumping together Ethiopia and Brazil, or jungle and mountains. To anyone who bothered to look, the idea of a unified commodity coffee called Folgers was an invention based on simplifying trade.

