July-August 2020 Newsletter
Retirement, alas, is not all it's cracked up to be. Or it wouldn't be, if I was actually retired. Instead of floating languidly down a tropical river sipping cocktails with little umbrellas in them, I've been fossicking in cardboard boxes with 30 years accumulation of espresso machine spare parts. And shivering my way through the usual cold Melbourne winter.
Marc and I have got the website and ordering systems up and running, and fairly well tuned. He now wants me to do a series of articles distilling the experience I've gained in 35 years in the coffee industry. Which I wouldn't mind doing, especially if I was writing them while on the deck of the boat floating languidly etc.etc.
Travel restrictions having put paid to that, I've been trying to clear out all the junk that's built up over the years, and rediscovered the jumble of machine spare parts left over when my technician retired. Later this month we'll be putting up a new webpage, initially just with parts for the Lelit PL041 and 042 and the PL53 grinder. These will be, in Real Estate parlance, "priced to sell", but remember that it's a list of bits and pieces rather than a comprehensive supply. The reason it's taking a bit of time to do is including the GST so that we can stay in line with the ATO.
Later on I hope to include a few odds and sods for the Silvia and Rocky, the Lelit PL Plus and the laScala Butterfly, but since most of the stuff is Lelit bits we're starting with them.
Now, onward to some of the "experience" bit. The history of coffee tends to emphasise the spread of coffee in the west, starting with bags of beans left behind when the Turks retreated from the siege of Vienna in 1683. In fact, there was already a thriving coffee culture in Venice (Italy) at this time, and the first licensed Venetian coffee house opened in the same year.
However, coffee and coffee houses were well known in the Islamic world by 1510. Coffee was a popular and profitable product from Cairo in Egypt to Mecca in Arabia to Constantinople in Turkey. That's why coffee growing, production and shipping were limited to Yemen, and the (then) Arabians protected their monopoly jealously.
The monopoly was broken in 1695 when Indian Sufi mystic Baba Budan smuggled out seven seeds following his pilgrimage to Mecca, allegedly in his beard. These were planted outside a temple in Chikmalagur, and there are still coffee plants directly descended from these 1695 plantings, growing in the same area.
Coffee seeds from this area were spread to Indonesia by Dutch traders, and from there became the basis for most of the Arabica coffee grown worldwide. DNA studies indicate that both Typica and Bourbon traits originated from the "seven seeds."
It's only recently that it's been possible to get hold of these heirloom coffees processed in the original way. The introduction of the East India Company and British coffee planters in the early 1800's meant that "native" coffee processing methods were set aside in favour of "modern" washing stations. Unfortunately this didn't do much for the flavour, producing clean but bland coffees mostly used for blending, quite unlike this month's special.
$56 Per Kilogram
Medium
Shimmering sweet acidity with notes of cinnamon and cloves in the middle palate, medium body and a burnt sugar finish.
