About half a lifetime ago, I went to Honduras to research a peculiar military revolution that had toppled the government back in 1913. Finding the documents necessary for my history thesis meant traveling to almost every corner of the Central American country, searching through libraries and government records.
Happily, while traveling around the country, I got to take in some of the sights—I toured a banana plantation, saw what little was left of a tropical jungle, and visited a coffee plantation that had been gifted to my alma mater, Enema U. The foreman graciously gave me a tour before we returned to his office to try some fresh coffee from beans that had just been roasted.
I can vividly remember the three best cups of coffee in my life. The first has to be when I was about nine years old. A freezer case stopped working in my father’s grocery store, and early Sunday morning, the two of us moved all the contents to other freezer cases or one of the walk-in freezers in the backroom. We had to shift a lot of stock around, and by the time we had finished the job, we were tired and cold, and we could barely feel our freezing hands. As we slowly warmed up, my father brought me my very first cup of coffee. I didn’t really like the taste, but my father had given it to me and I would have gladly drunk it even if it had been on fire.
The second-best cup of coffee was in the basement of an aging and crumbling building on the campus of Enema U. Fred Dabney, the swing shift DJ at KRWG, the campus radio station, somehow produced an incredible cup of coffee from a pot that hadn’t been cleaned properly since the fifties. Whether it was because he ground the beans in an ancient hand-cranked antique or because the water he used came from aging basement pipes, his coffee was always spectacular. While Fred was busy announcing the next jazz record, I’d guzzle his coffee and read news from around the world off the teletype.
For third place, it has to be that cup of coffee at the Honduran plantation. Freshly roasted and ground just seconds before being placed in the French press, the coffee was consumed within sight of the coffee plants. I’ve also eaten trout that were grilled beside the stream where they had been caught, and I have this theory that everything tastes better close to the source. I’m trying to convince The Doc we need to take a trip to a certain distillery in Islay.
Coffee, of course, is not native to Central America, but was introduced to the New World by the Spanish in the 16th century. For many years, only small amounts were produced, mainly on the islands of Haiti and Cuba until early in the 19th century, when shortly before independence movements swept the Spanish from power in Central and South America, planting coffee was encouraged to bolster the economy. Though coffee production was most successful in Costa Rica, the mountain slopes of Honduras also had the right combination of soil and climate to grow exceptionally good coffee.
Costa Rica was so successful in exporting coffee that the country developed economically faster and earlier than the rest of Central America, [[a condition that lasts to this day]]. Following the success of Costa Rica, the other countries soon expanded their coffee production, as well. Though the amount of coffee produced in Central America has never been a very large part of the world market, the coffee has always been known to be of exceptionally fine quality, lending itself to mixing well with beans grown elsewhere.
Particularly valued are the Arabica coffee varieties that grow in the volcanic soil on the sides of mountains at altitudes above 3000 feet. While the bulk of Honduran Arabica coffee is actually seven different types of Arabica, I’ll just lump them all together as ‘Arabica’. Coffee makers around the world purchase this coffee and combine it with other types of beans to produce superior blends.
In a typical year, Arabica makes up 60% of the world’s coffee production, while almost all of the the rest is Robusta. Unfortunately, this is not going to be a typical year. We are either all going to have to pay more for coffee this year, or we’re going to have to settle for a noticeably different flavor in our coffee. There is a worldwide shortage of Arabica beans, and those that do reach the market are likely to cost more than last year’s. There are two reasons for the shortage.
First, we can blame the La Niña weather pattern: After a year of severe weather that damaged a lot of the Arabica plants, a once-in-a-century severe frost killed a lot of the coffee bushes in Brazil last year. If that weren’t enough, La Niña is projected to significantly reduce rainfall to both Central America and Brazil, this year, further decreasing production. As a result of these difficulties, many planters are taking advantage of the off year to replace damaged, older bushes with fresh seedlings that will take at least a year to produce mature beans.
Second, the problems plaguing the supply chains in every other industry are hitting the coffee industry, too. Since ports in most coffee producing countries are rarely among the most efficient and coffee is shipped in containers of which there is a worldwide shortage, as I write this, millions of bags of green coffee beans are being stored in dockside warehouses, waiting for containers. On the London commodities market, Arabica bean futures are currently up 80%.
The prices of Robusta beans, however, will probably not see as much of a rise in prices. Vietnam, the largest exporter of Robusta beans, has produced a bumper crop this year. And while the ports in Vietnam are also currently congested, those ports are far more modern and efficient than those found in Central and South America.
For the retailers of either the beans or coffee by the cup, there are only two options: Either the prices are about to rise significantly or the manufacturers of blended coffee are going to change the flavor palette and use more Robusta bans in your morning cup of joe.
I was not affected by the last big coffee shortage (and price increase) because I was younger, my tastebuds were immature (My wife says I had the tastes of an 8 year-old which she proceeded to work on through attempts to starve me to death through judicious application of onions, peppers and unsweetened tea. I eventually learned to love onions and peppers in my food. I was 155 pounds when we were married. Her success can be measured on the scale which maxed our at twice my fighting weight. I'm creeping back down very slowly, but it's hard because so many of my favorite onion/pepper dishes also include tortillas, beans and cheese. I managed to learn to appreciate unsweetened ice tea through a generous application of a miraculous substance known as Sweet & Low.
ReplyDeleteShe has also tried valiantly to get me to share cups of morning coffee on the veranda with her (when we actually have had access to a veranda anyway). Apparently, I am a Philistine where coffee is concerned and my Sweet Baboo cannot understand this. She was actually weaned as an infant straight from my mother-in-law's ample breasts straight to coffee. I think at first it was served here in a bottle with a nipple by a woman who drank a full pot of coffee in the morning and one in the evening and if there was company a third pot in the afternoon.
My own Mom did forgo administering caffeine to her children as we grew up in a Seventh-day Adventist college town in which caffeine was frowned upon. Instead we drank a different beverage called Postum, a caffeine free roasted bean beverage sold in the vegetarian grocery in our town.
My step-dad, however, was a big coffee drinker and being a former Mississippi tugboat cook, even sneaked in shrimp on occasion. Anyway, I had little exposure to coffee as a young person. When I did sample it, it tasted to me like the water Mom poured from the pot after she had burned the pinto beans - an essential part of our rice and beans and gravy based diet growing up poor in Texas.
Mom tried adding large quantities of milk and sugar and even Nestle's Quick to the coffee, but to me it always tasted like burned bean juice. This is a great sadness for my wife who's Louisiana cultural background demands that adult family members spend time sipping the vile black liquid at the kitchen table or out on the porch. It is a key element of family relations in her family. Sadly, the best I could ever do was to chain my ADHD butt to a chair with a cup of hot Dr. Pepper or hot tea with a bunch of Sweet & Low in it. Apparently, that doesn't work. If I don't douse my tongue with scalding burned bean juice, the Louisiana coffee-bonding experience just doesn't happen. Also, she's caught me putting sweetener in my unsweetened tea.
ReplyDeleteMy theory is that people from Louisiana need the taste of bitterness as some sort of reminder that living in Louisiana is a bitter experience. I've live in Louisiana and find this to be so. I had a mechanic who overhauled my engine and charged me $400 so I could get out of Louisiana. He told me he would come to Louisiana because the women were easy, but would move back to Dallas for a while in order to make money.
I'm not sure what sort of lesson there is in that with regard to the culture there, but black coffee, unsweetened tea, boudin (sausages made with whatever meat the chef has shot, strangled or picked up along the road lately), catfish, oysters, crawdads, shrimp and various other aquatic insectoids or scum-sucking bottom dwellers, seems to be an essential part of the culture.
I grew up in Texas where barbecue and Mexican food and fiery chili mingled with fried chicken, venison, steak, biscuits, corn on the cob and bass deep fried. I grew up unprepared for the bitterness of coffee and have never figured out how to get around the bitterness. I don't need that kind of bitterness in my life anyway. I don't even like Coca-Cola, my wife's essential soda, which she just asked me to bring her. She's asleep by the way. Apparently she dreams of carbonated creosote.