My coffee tendencies are well known to my friends, colleagues and clients.
Truth be told, I am rarely more pleasant than when found at the local Starbucks with a piping hot Grande Bold, that cafe's signature dark-roast of the day, in my plainly admiring hands.
(Cream only, in case you're wondering - or buying).
Many of my high school memories are centred around "going out for a coffee" nightly at the old Bagel King restaurant on Eglinton Avenue West. It is hard to forget the time my friend Norm sent a fresh cup of java, via our usual waitress, to that "interesting" girl across the restaurant, in the vain hope of "scoring."
None of us had the foggiest idea what to do next, of course. So we just had another coffee, and talked about it.
And talked about it some more.
Until she left.
And we probably talked about that too.
(Some things never change)
Perhaps it is fitting that Norm and family have recently landed in Seattle, America's coffee capital.
I've often remarked, however, on just how awful that coffee we grew up on was - bland, thin and equally dull in both fragrance and impact.
While that did not seem to bother us much back in the day, as we knew not better (in retrospect, however, I am unclear as to how I subsequently made it through law school on the stuff), my first Starbuck's coffee truly opened my eyes.
Literally.
It was as if I had suddenly tasted coffee again, for the very first time.
With this history in mind, then, I learned today of the passing of a man, Alfred Peet, to whom I am apparently much indebted.
Smelling the Coffee has the sad news:
R. I. P. Alfred Peet.
"I came to the richest country in the world, so why are they drinking the lousiest coffee?"
When Alfred Peet opened his shop in Berkeley in April, 1966 he started a coffee revolution. Nobody had ever seen top-quality coffee like this roasted in this unique style in America.
Alfred Peet, 87, a Dutch tea trader who started the gourmet coffee craze in the United States with his rich, darkly roasted, high-altitude beans and taught the trade to the founders of Starbucks and sold them their first year's supply, died Aug. 29 at his home in Ashland, Ore.
I, for one, would be happy to nominate him for a Nobel Coffee Prize, if there were one.
And - there should be.
(h/t - Dave Johnson, Seeing the Forest)
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