COFFEA ROBUSTA

"Black coffee
Since the blues caught my eye
I'm hanging out on Monday
My Sunday dreams to dry"


Some people start their day with a nice cup of tea. Others with a drink of water. Still others insist upon a cold glass of juice. Or even a combination of the above.

Me, I start with a cup of coffee. Or three.

Coffee is, as is well documented, an age-old drink consumed literally worldwide. Even the British and Indians, famous for their teas and traditions, have adopted coffee as an important part of their day.

As my tag line states, one of the components of a good day, for me, is a strong cup of coffee. I come by this honestly. My father was, for years, a major coffee drinker. A career Navy man, it often was the sip of choice on the bridge of a ship during the long nights at sea. As children we were allowed coffee as a special treat -- heavily dosed with milk and, in those days, sugar.

(Odd aside: For years I drank my coffee the same way, replacing sugar with sweetener when Equal, Splenda -- and later Truvia -- came along. Well into my thirties in fact. Then, on a trip to Paris for our 15th anniversary, I had my coffee black with sweetener, and discovered that I preferred it that way. Only rarely since then have I gone back to any kind of creamer unless it's a latte, or the cup served up is so godawfully average it needs the perk.) (Pun intended.)

As with almost anything, I have my favorite brands. Over the years I've gone to many a coffee house, and purchased hundreds -- if not thousands, I haven't done the math -- of pounds of both beans and already-ground coffee for my home use.

My favorite perking mechanism is my coffee press. I originally bought a small one-serving press in a little boutique shop in the French town of Amboise in the Loire Valley. This was shortly after the above "non-creamer" revelation, so I was open to trying new things for my morning cup. I loved this little press -- still have it -- but realized soon after returning to the States that a single-serving was not going to do it, and I quickly purchased a much larger press for regular use. And used regularly it is, accounting for some 70-80% of the coffee services I drink at home.

I've tried a variety of other methods. I have a Keurig machine, which is terrific for those times I only want that single cup of coffee and don't want to wait for the water to boil on the stove (sorry small coffee press). The only issue with the Keurigs is the wastefulness of the K-Cups. Kinda bugs me to throw two or three of them away every time I fill up my mug. )Yes, I have a large mug. Several, in fact.

Over the years I've tasted a number of brands, and hit a few chains. Starbuck's, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, It's a Grind, as well as several others that have been bought up or gone out of business. I prefer the smaller, more bohemian local shops -- they're a lot more fun and adventurous. You can learn a whole lot more about an area by visiting a locally-owned single-site coffee house than you can by grabbing a cup of joe at the nearby Starbuck's -- a store that is virtually identical to the ones in Seattle, Albuquerque, Chicago, and Wheeling, West Virginia.

(And the less said about McDonald's McCafe effort the better. I have to doff my cap to the marketing person who realized they could serve the same old coffee in fancier cups and charge a premium for the privilege. Yes, they were amazingly cynical, but we DID fall for it in a big way. They're even selling McCafe brand coffee in the supermarkets now.)

Coffee is, to me, far more than just a morning pick-me-up. Yes, it's also a prop, I recognize that. It's also something that is familiar when I'm on the road. I wrote a column, some time back, that talked about my early years when the smell of my father's black coffee wafted back from the front of the car as my mother opened a Thermos and poured it for him on those early mornings we were off to some sort of an adventure and it required leaving at, as my father would put it, "O'Dark Thirty".  ( http://thumbnailtraveler.blogspot.com/2011/11/tasters-choice-and-open-road.html )

(Dad being a Navy man used the term decades before it hit popular language with the movie of the same name. What the general public doesn't realize is that military people had been using the reference all along, and it was only new to the more general population.)

There's an entire world that has grown up around the humble little coffee bean -- seen to the right on a farm in Hawaii. Everything from Todd Carmichael's fascinating tv show Dangerous Grounds to the explosive growth of the Starbuck's Culture. Competitions are held for both the best-tasting coffee -- similar to what you would find in the wine and spirits worlds -- and for the best baristas (also similar to competitions between bottle-juggling bartenders, though I'm reasonably certain the "flairing" with hot coffee is kept to an absolute minimum. In fact, from what I've seen the bartenders are the jugglers, while the baristas are the artists.

No matter where I go, however, finding that good cup of coffee is an important aspect of not only finding out something about the location itself, but bringing a bit of home along with me.

If that makes any sense.