Quest 4 The Best · Tuesday January 20, 2009 by colin newell
The ‘best’ is not necessarily the most expensive. The ‘best’ is not necessarily the luxury-labelled product. The ‘best’ is actually always only known to an insider. Make that ‘only known to you’. Because the real ‘best’ is subjective and everybody somewhat in tune with their inner self knows when this personal ‘best’ has been found.
Same with whatever the ‘best’ coffee might be. Divorces were filed over badly brewed ones and first borns cut out of wills because of the wrong filter paper. So the serving of self-grown coffee to a coffee guru of Colin Newells’ caliber can make even the sturdiest coffee farmer shiver in his muddy boots. Yet when Colin and his darling Andrea tasted our beans on our Hawaiian coffee farm, he included the very four letter word in his compliment:
“Best Kona I’ve tasted.”
What-, whose? Ours?! The shivering stopped immediately, which was nice. Upon Colin’s question what we think makes our Kona beans so good, I had to admit that a big part is certainly the very setting surrounding him. Like the nameless wine served from a simple carafe in a small village in the Provence or Tuscany after having hiked the cobble-stoned streets- this wine happens always to be the very best, because it feels and tastes just right. Right for that particular moment and place. Yet with a taste which belongs to something bigger and transcends, elevates one. So the ‘best coffee’ is not what we claim to grow (albeit we like to hear it), but I felt that it was also the special moment in time what Colin meant when he stated it.
Breathing the silky Hawaiian air, tasting the purity of our fresh rain water, the view of the verdant green hills covered with coffee bushes surrounding him, and the awareness that everything around contributed to this very coffee drinking experience. Watching the chickens who pick the bugs out of our orchard, the lush grass being alive under his feet, the sun which right then when it got too hot to bear got hidden by shade spending afternoon clouds, that he can ask the farmers how they found the place and what they would have to do tomorrow, hearing the rake going through the rustling parchment drying in the sun, sensing the history of the area, taking in the scenery. All that was his personal ‘best’- our coffee only being the accelerator, the oil in the gears.
Yesterday when you shelled out the big bucks for premium brands, a large portion of what you paid for was the actual product – today you are paying largely for marketing. But marketing campaigns do not make real luxury. The real luxury is finding these particular moments in time for yourself, for your friends, for when life is in sync. It may be the cappuccino with that formidable person on a rainy afternoon in a smokey cafe: We may hear you say that this is the best cappuccino you ever had. But what you meant is that you really feel good about where you are and who you are with.
Colin asked me to write from time to time about what we are doing here on our Kona coffee farm, our day-to-day farmer life, noteworthy experiences and news from the island. I wrapped my head around it of how to find an angle so that it would not be understood as a sales pitch or marketing (because we happen to sell our coffee as well). Having a cup of coffee is great fuel for experiencing the aforementioned particular moments; many magical moments are happening by farming and processing coffee as well. So I’ll try to share one or the other with you in the weeks to come. Of course what hopefully will be a simple, good read can certainly be enhanced with having your very personal ‘best’ coffee along with it.
Joachim Oster is a coffee farmer and owner (with his lovely wife Demetria and daughter Athena…) of Blue Horse Kona Coffee Farm in Kealakekua, Hawaii (near Captain Cook). His writing will periodically grace the pages of the CoffeeCrew Blog – and for that we are eternally grateful!
Summer food fun and drink - enjoying friendships · Friday August 15, 2008 by colin newell
Victoria once had a pretty good cafe called Torrefazione Italia – ostensibly owned by Starbucks in their latter days – starting independently in the eighties or nineties and then getting swallowed up by the green machine in the late nineties.
Starbucks gave them a freehand for quite a while. Alas, some of the Torrefazione outlets became a little too popular for the sensibilities of the Mother-Ship in Seattle. The Portland location (several of them maybe) were very popular with Italian Americans, the signature coffee resonating with this hard-working group of coffee loving folks. And when the ‘Bucks shut the doors on T.I. about 4 years ago, there were some pretty heady protests – some large. Some small.
I was part of the small protest. I bought my cups (shown above). I wished the staff best of luck… and then I cursed Starbucks when they opened one more cookie-cutter location a thin block away from yet-another-Starbucks on the corner of Yates and Government Streets in Victoria… in the place where the beloved Torrefazione used to be.
Torrefazione was a friend, albeit an inanimate one of sorts – but a friend I could count on none the less. For great coffee. Comfortable digs. And feeding the friendships that I had at the time.
Which brings me to my point… about celebrating with the people around you. Your friends. Your close friends. Your new ones… and the old ones.
Never take a friendship or association for granted. It needs to be nurtured. And fed.
It might be just me, but in these times of thriving specialty coffee – and vibrant cafes… friendships, new and old, appear to germinate and blossom in places like these. It could be the caffeine, that catalyzes voluble discussion in combination with the power of sugar and grains – that calm the soul… and feed the mind.
It helps us grow. And be the best people we can be. There for the people that need us… when they need us.
Celebrate a friendship today.
Comment [2]
Summer fun food and drink - Bottomless in Australia · Sunday July 27, 2008 by colin newell
As a Canadian, I have fun with the Australians. I mean, we are a lot alike. Canadians and Aussies love coffee. But currently, the Aussies have one up on us here in North America…
Click on photo at left for the zippy view
Their culture is espresso-centric.
That means that everything is based on espresso coffee. Everything is built upon it.
In Canada, we are less focused… and anything goes. That means coffee shops that pride themselves on their espresso, their drip coffee, their mud, their latte art, their French press and their Clover… and so on. And so on. And so on.
Oh yea. Forgot one. Our Tim Horton’s.
In Australia, the coffee experience springs from a point source and that point source is espresso coffee. And from an esoteric point of view, this allows a people (the Aussies) and a culture (being Australian) to be the absolute best that anyone can be at something (espresso culture).
Representing this wave is Crema Magazine in Australia – they have been around for a few years documenting the ascent of coffee greatness… I mean, espresso greatness. I have been fortunate enough to have a few pictures published in Crema magazine – which is cool… And I would love to do more… If they would let me. So. Hats off to the great people at Crema Magazine!
Oh yea – Photo above is of the single boiler Innova espresso – modified and sold by Geir Oglend of the Drumroaster Cafe on Vancouver Island – to be reviewed on CoffeeCrew.Com real soon.
Comment [1]
Summer fun food and drink - Great coffee in Panama - a downside · Sunday July 27, 2008 by colin newell
Panama’s gourmet coffees fetch record prices for their prized flavors – and I know all too well just how wonderful Panama La Hacienda Esmeralda Geisha tastes – but the increasing demand has convinced some growers to clear land illegally… and plant in one of the country’s few protected highland forests.
Here are some facts. Coffee employs 12 to 15 million people World-wide, many of them complete families… all ages. And many of them live in a cycle of poverty. The average coffee bean changes hands over 100 times on its way from the coffee bush to your cup – often by people who never actually see the often – who live a World away from the environment that actually produces coffee.
The internet, on various levels, has changed some of that – for at least a some of these hard working folks: Online auctions and farm to roaster direct purchases have put the money where it belongs – in the hands of the farms (fincas) and the farmers and their community.
The upside is, the average family has gone from earning pennies on the pound to several dollars for a pound of green coffee – coffee you and I regularly pay 10 to 15$ a pound for roasted. This means food, health care, shelter (for the farmers) and an education for the children – and great coffee for you.
For Panama, having small tracts of incredible coffee that has been yielding upwards of $130/pound in the marketplace, the temptation to exploit this has been irresistible . Panama’s Environmental Protection Agency has uncovered rogue tracts of land in the Volcan Baru National Park, raising concerns that more park land could be endangered as the demand increases.
The nature preserve is ringed with coffee farms growing the country’s “geisha” beans, often described as the champagne of coffee for their subtle jasmine-like taste highly sought after by boutique roasters from North America, Europe and Japan. I have had this coffee. The descriptions do not do it justice – and if you do a google search, you will see that the net has been sprouting new Geisha sites every week.
And now, an insatiable demand for geisha beans have lured some growers well inside the park’s boundaries. It is ironic, but not surprising considering the kind of hardship coffee farmers have lived with.
The point of all of this? Get to know your coffee when you are drinking it. Get to know the farmers, the processes and the economy of coffee – look beyond the rim of your coffee cup and get the big picture.
