04.29.09

The Various Flavours of Coffee

Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 1:59 pm by Miracle ♪♫

An unexpected deluge of rain and off went our lights again. Blame it on the substandard materials of our electric company. The rain was welcome however, an oasis in these extremely warm days, and I am not here to curse ZANECO but speak of a most interesting, let’s put it this way, drink.

“But first - always first! - some coffee.”
- from The Various Flavours of Coffee, Anthony Capella

More than a week ago, instead of continuing my engagement with Dante, I picked up the book Franz gave me last January; The Various Flavours of Coffee. As anyone may have surmised, it is not in league with Dante, but I still went through this book’s aromas slowly. No, I did not devour it as I have done with most books but savoured it lazily as I would a cup of espresso during rainy days.

The Various Flavours of Coffee commences in 1896 and wafts through two decades enveloping England, Africa, Brazil, the dark history of coffee, slavery, women’s suffrage movements, politics, passion, poetry, and unexpected and unconventional love stories.

It all begins when the protagonist and poet Robert Wallis is hired by a coffee mogul to compose a ‘vocabulary of coffees’ which would serve as a guide for identifying the best coffees in the world. I went through chapter by chapter thinking I liked it, then liked it not, liked it again, and liked it not again, and so on, but finally I ended up liking it for a number of reasons. Among these reasons are the maturity and cultivation of a once immoral fool, the portrayed strength and weaknesses of women, and of course, the subject of coffee and its many different flavours that are analogous with life’s experiences. Even though this book may never go down through history among the greatest works of literature, Anthony Capella is an author who knows how to capture the reader uniquely and at some points, intoxicate.

What have I learned? I have learned what every man must learn, and no man can be taught – that despite what poets may tell you, there are different kinds of love… love itself consists not of one emotion, but many. Just as a good coffee might smell of – perhaps – leather and tobacco and honeysuckle, all at once, so love is a mixture of any number of feelings…

The laugh of a woman, the smell of a child, the making of coffee – these are the various flavours of love.

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Thank you for the book, Franz. Let’s have espresso soon! The Artist recently bought a six-cupper Bialetti as a present for his barista daughter. This book and the moka pot went along very well! ;-)

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Our home (also known as Café Romano) continues to welcome daily visitors this summer and we are constantly asked what makes our coffee special or what our so-called secret brew is. Mama sometimes indulges and nods toward my direction and says, “She has a secret ingredient. She makes it with love.”

…and that, I do. But shhh…

not everyone knows. ;-)

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