mie

one of my favorite things about being in coffee – working in “specialty coffee” - is that i always, at every season, every year, over and over again have this excited feeling about being at the beginning of the beginning. something is about to happen. friday night text message from friend out traveling ticked in with a question about what coffee to choose after a magnificent, outstanding dining experience. the choice was between "india mysore" or "kona coffee". um. well. at least it was a choice, and again i was thinking "something is about to happen".

let me go back a few weeks when husband and i visited nyc. we had delicious cappuccinos at gimme!. coffee brewed a la minute on clovers at café grumpy and el beit. and brown water at pretty much every restaurant visited. i started sympathize with all those people i’ve encountered over the years that claim they simply “don’t like coffee”. so there i am, in the world’s best city, paying hundreds of dollars for delicious food and 10$ for a cup of coffee – turns out it’s dish water. don’t think i’m trying to label nyc, this is also status quo in oslo and everywhere else in norway. the second largest coffee consuming country per capita after our eastern neighbors finland. seriously, i’ve never met anyone working in food or wine around the cupping table that couldn’t taste the difference. KAFFA is hosting public cuppings every morning during the week. i know i’m sort of lame on showing up on things myself, but if there was a regular wine tasting every day i’m sure people would show up even if they didn’t “care for the style” (yes, i once had someone working in wine entering one of our public cuppings, claiming he only liked “good coffee” and therefore refused to cup our coffees, but that’s a completely different story. at least he had a stand point in this matter).

so, i’m sure people notice the difference, and they are not forced into buying the (good) stuff, but still, most cuppings are done with baristas and only baristas. people working in food / wine obviously have the palate to detect the difference between a cup of any industrial blend and a specialty coffee. defining specialty coffee like erna knutsen coined the term in 1974: "to describe beans of outstanding flavor produced by special microclimates".

let’s leave the training required for making espresso out of the discussion this time. i would be satisfied with no choice for espresso / espresso based drinks available, just a clean, delicious cup of chemex, french press or filter brewed coffee. restaurants quite frequently uses french press, for example, why do they put horrible coffee in it? i’m not talking about coffee that was roasted into something I don’t care particularly much about, or processed in a way i’m not fond of for that specific coffee. i’m talking about coffee they bought from where they buy their candles, napkins or whatever. i know that a restaurateur can be quite price sensitive, but i’m sure the difference of a few dollars per cup of coffee is something customers aren’t that reluctant to spend after spending hundreds on food and wine. especially if they are served that coffee with the same knowledge about the differences between minas gerais and bahia as their sommelier showed when explaining the differences in burgundy terroir between côte de beaune from côte de nuits. specialty roasters seems to care a lot about sourcing coffees, so there is a lot of information available regarding where the coffee came from, what’s special about that region etc.

of course, there are many exceptions. and lots of things can also be said about pairing coffees with desserts. a sweet dessert with lots of fat will bring out the brighter notes in a coffee that you thought of as dark and savory. paired with extreme sweetness, you will have to think about that coffee in another way. a long discussion for another time. so for now, that excited feeling of being at the beginning of the beginning is still there.