As you know, we live in the heart of Coffee Country. Right now the coffee plants are heavy with beans. The ones that make the best coffee are bright red when they are ripe, and there are plenty of those. The coffee harvest lasts from late October through March, with beans ripening continuously throughout these months. For best flavor, they have to be picked within a few days of full ripening. Actually, I think to be any good at all they have to be picked fast. Jim and I and Guillermo bought 70 coffee plants last summer and Guillermo did the very hard work of planting them all on our steep hillside. These new plants won't be ready to harvest for another two and a half years. But there were already a bunch of mature ones. Pete, the former owner, worshipped the view to the extent of lopping off everything that obscured it, but he didn't kill everything so a number of the coffee plants have been reborn (it is the habit to lop off coffee trees, especially fat old ones after harvest anyway). And Guillermo is harvesting for us and he and Jero are shelling and drying -- the first stage. The beans will have to have yet another layer removed. Our beans thus far are a beautiful, shiny red, like cranberries. We had thought we might have enough for a couple of pots, but it seems we will actually have enough for several kilos, spread out over the coming months!
Which leads me to the fact that we have found another good place to buy coffee, this one in Teocelo (check out the map on Part I of our 8 hours in... post). I had mentioned that the organic coffee available in Coátepec was not as good as coffee from La Onza which is very fine shade grown coffee with very little use of chemicals, if any. I haven't asked directly, but it is important to realize that a lot of stuff here is close to organic: it is just incredibly difficult and expensive to get an organic certification. The owners of La Onza are warm and gracious and very willing to talk about coffee and everything connected to it.
I bought a book at La Onza called "Tomando Café, Manual del Catador." A catador is a coffee taster, and that is exactly what the author, Ramón Aguilar Ruíz was for many, many years. As it says on the back cover, "You, gentle reader, will find the bases for becoming an expert coffee taster." Along the way, it provides a lot of information in a slender volume about coffee growing, harvesting, etc.
But we have, as I said, found another place for buying coffee that may have us hooked. There are, you have to realize, a huge number of coffee stores, particularly in Coátepec which is both the center of the business of coffee growing in the region and a tourist town as well. Teocelo is not yet much of a tourist town. Jim and I first went there quite a number of years ago. We parked alongside the small town park and walked around feeling like we were definitely strangers. Now of course we live here and everything feels different. Anyway, Jim and Mindy, whom I think I've mentioned, are the only Gringos who live in Teocelo, and they told us about this coffee store, so of course we went. Jo and Alberto were with us -- we had just finished the first Spanish lesson the six of us are having together, this time at Jim and Mindy's. (I am sort of writing up the lessons, Alberto is really great with pronunciation lessons and with introducing us to considerably more awareness of everyday speech patterns and enhancing vocabulary, etc. etc.)
The name of the place is La Mesa. It sells café orgánico, calidad exportación. Now calidad exportación is an interesting concept because it is the highest quality coffee that goes to Europe, but Americans by and large actually seem to prefer lower quality and that's what we get in the US! American blend coffee uses less than rosy beans and definitely is roasted less (the roasting is usually done in the States). La Mesa coffee is sold in a store in an old colonial building that is just another one-story pitch-roofed colonial building on a stone-paved street. The front doors open into a high-ceilinged entryway with a bell with a clapper that you have to ring. The owner opens the store only when a customer shows up because he and his wife live in the large room on the other side of the store and there's no need to leave the door ajar. He is an older man, maybe in his late seventies, trim, elegant in a casual sort of way. Elegant is a way of being I think. There is a kind of elegance that quite a number of people rich and not so rich, young and old have here. The jaw specialist Jim went to has elegance in spades.
The owner whose name I have unfortunately forgotten brought us into the store, a fairly simple room, but ample and cheerful. He explained that they have three roasts: expresso, European and American, each in its own big, covered barrel. The coffee comes from his family's coffee finca nearby. As we chatted, his wife came in, a somewhat younger woman, very energetic. She explained that although she seemed energetic, she preferred the slower pace of the country where she was from. She loved going back to the finca and did not like the pace of the city, the city being Teocelo which of course from our perspective didn't seem to have a city pace at all. I'm not sure of the population but I would imagine it couldn't have more than ten thousand people in it. We asked the owner if Teocelo had gotten a lot busier in recent years. He said, maybe a little.
There is a railroad museum in Teocelo, and the owner is the founder and curator. We are hoping to visit it soon: he'll open it for us if we give him a call. In the late nineteenth century, a railroad was built by a private company, US if I remember correctly, which went between Xalapa and Teocelo. It was supposed to go to Córdoba, but the terrain proved too difficult. I can believe that! Until the 1920's it ran successfully between Teocelo and Xalapa. In the early twenties, there was a strike -- possibly part of the Revolution but I don't know -- and the railroad was turned over to the workers who ran it as a cooperative venture until I think maybe the thirties when the federal government took it over (I'll have to check all this). In any event, by the late forties, roads had been constructed and buses and trucks provided much faster transportation so the train was shut down. The museum is in the old train station which the owner of La Mesa rescued from doom and destruction. I am looking forward to learning more.
The owner and his wife live, as I said, in the very large room adjoining the store. The hall, the store and their living quarters are in a line, all facing the street, all with very tall windows. The living quarters are ample, if one room. The walls are painted blue and rose -- that washed kind of look common in Mexico -- and look lovely. As seems fitting, the furniture is heavy, dark classical Mexican looking with brocade covers. And there is a very up-to-date exercycle.
We bought coffee en grano (in bean form) media kilo Europeo, media kilo espreso. It cost 40 pesos per media kilo, or a little less than four dollars for a little more than a pound.
In Mexico, folk medicine blends into everyday life for everyone. It's actually wrong to call it folk -- maybe traditional is better -- even that sounds wrong. It's just that long before US producers started touting health claims for their verious processed products, Mexicans were aware of possible health benefits in various things they ate and drank. Much of it is true, I think. There are all kinds of teas and herbs and tree leaves and fruits good for the stomach, for coughs, for treating injuries, for fevers. Anyway, they've incorporated modern claims along with the old ones, some of which may be new wives' tales.
Here are the claims for coffee on the pamphlet that comes with La Mesa coffee.
Brain and nervous system: Inhibits depression, promotes short term memory retention, reduces or eliminates migraine headaches, lifts the spirits.
Heart and circulatory system: Allows a bigger quantity of oxygenated blood to reach the muscles. Helps move the greasy acids which are in the blood.
Respiratory system: protects agains asthma, opens bronchial passages.
Stomach: Favors the production of salivary and gastric juices, stimulates the secretion of bile.
Liver: Reduces up to 80% the risk of cirrhosis of the liver in consumers of alcohol. Reduces the risk of bile stones.
Kidneys: reduces 10% kidney stones.
Regarding cancer: Neutralizes the chemicals causing cancer owing to the polyphenols (?) which coffee contains.
A couple of other notes from the pamphlet:
It is recommended that children have a cup of coffee with milk in the morning to improve their scholarly performance.
Coffee is not just caffeine: it contains substances which are advantageous for the organism such as chlorogenics, mineral salts, aminoacids, lipids, niacine, etc.
This information, by the way, was obtained from a Mexican Coffee Council article.
Here's how to prepare tradicional coffee on the stove:
In a clean pot put on the fire only the water necessary for the number of cups to be consumed.
When the water begins to boil, wait a minute and pour in a soup spoon of coffee for each cup you are going to prepare.
Cover the pot and let it rest a few minutes. Wait till it settles, strain and serve.
Here in our neighborhood, people put the sugar -- lots of it -- in with the coffee. It's kind of like drinking syrup.
Anyway, enjoy your coffee and don't forget to buy Mexican shade-grown coffee, preferably from Veracruz.