Like a lot of kids, I loved coffee’s aroma long before I could stand its taste: bitter, strange, and as off-putting to a young and delicate palate as whiskey, or kale. My parents drank the stuff every morning, without fail: nothing fancy — but then fancy coffee wasn’t really a thing in the ’80s and early ’90s — just dark-roasted beans from the clear-plastic dispenser at Seessel’s. I remember watching as they put an open paper bag to the mouth of the dispenser, then pulled the lever, sending a cascade of coffee downward. At home, I loved the sound and scent each morning as they ground the beans for their Chemex pour-over. I don’t really know why they preferred the pour-over method (taste? Simplicity? Some early intuition about the perils of microplastics?); at the time, it was just another of their quirks.
My household’s lack of a Mr. Coffee was no more or less surprising than its lack of a microwave. (For that matter, we didn’t have a television until I was in kindergarten, and then only a 13-inch number that mostly collected dust.) My mom sent me to school in skirts she sewed using patterns from the fabric store. On Thursday evenings, when we cleaned the house, our reward repast was a baked potato and steamed spinach. And my idea of a treat was not dinner in front of the television, but rather “reading dinner” — when we all sat around the kitchen table reading our books. You could be forgiven for wondering if I am actually 120 years old.
I continued to be a daily coffee drinker in adulthood, but it wasn’t until I met my husband that my at-home coffee drinking turned fancy.
Like a lot of kids, I didn’t care for coffee’s taste; like a lot of young adults, I learned to tolerate it to combat teenage sleep deprivation. By the time I was in high school, I was drinking café au lait each morning. My mom would warm the milk on an electric burner (still no microwave!) before driving me to school; I can see her now, standing at the stove in her robe, stirring the milk with a wooden spoon to be sure it didn’t scald.
I continued to be a daily coffee drinker in adulthood, but it wasn’t until I met my husband that my at-home coffee drinking turned fancy. I was content to buy grocery-store coffee and brew it in a sad old black-plastic coffee machine from a big-box store; it got the job done. But when I met Cameron, he already had an Illy espresso machine that he used most mornings; when our house caught on fire and most electronics had to be replaced, we swapped a Breville for the Illy. I was intimidated by both machines at first; the Breville still sometimes tests my patience, especially first thing in the morning, which tends to be when a person needs coffee most urgently. I don’t always get the espresso calibration quite right; it’s taken me years to become halfway proficient at milk-frothing for lattes. Most of the time, if he’s in town, Cameron is the family barista, which suits me just fine.
He’s also the one who goes to the farmer’s market most Saturdays, which is where he stocks up on the week’s supply of Cxffeeblack coffee. It’s noticeably more expensive than what we might buy at the grocery store — even the expensive grocery store — but it’s so far superior as to be habit-forming. And unlike coffee from a big corporation, this is coffee grown by people who know the people who sold it to you. There’s a directness to the process that makes a very large world feel much smaller and more humane. I write more about that process in this month’s cover story.
From time to time, I’ll fall down an internet rabbit hole searching for images of what various food crops look like when they’re still growing. This habit started as mere curiosity, and a sense of how disconcerting it is, how displaced I feel when realizing that I can’t always call to mind an idea of what something in my grocery sack looked like in its more natural form. Can you envision a chickpea plant growing? What does tea look like before it’s harvested and roasted? Why does asparagus look so zombie-like when it’s sprouting out of the soil? Did you know that cinnamon is basically tree bark? How about stalks of Brussels sprouts: They might as well be Medieval weapons.
But coffee — I don’t know. Until all too recently, it eluded my curiosity. It was just … coffee. I relied on it each morning (and some afternoons), but didn’t devote much thought to where it grew, or how, or under what conditions — or, just as importantly, who grew it. Learning more about the people and places that produce that precious fuel has made me appreciate it more deeply, drink it with more reverence. I still rely on coffee to carry me through the hours, but it’s also, now, an opportunity for connection and curiosity. And I still, always, love the smell.
