The Unbearable Lightness of Bean

    I have struggled over the years with the single origin espresso on offer at Expresso Espresso. There has been strength without comprehension, power without passion, and sometimes that most exquisite but fatal flaw in a single origin coffee - beauty without restraint. This has all changed. A new bean, an exciting new beginning. They would only tell me it comes from a bush, somewhere in the foothills of Senegal, which was once urinated on by a white rhino. It is not for me to speculate about spiritual significance of this animal, but there is magic afoot.

There is at first sip a reluctance to engage. It is as if the coffee were saying "come here, no go away". And then the dance begins. There is Berlioz, there is Bartok, there is even a hint of Wagner at his more lyrical and lilting. There is that life-affirming splash of ozone as the lightening storm approaches. There is cinnamon and chocolate and tobacco and Armagnac all tied up in a dervish dance whirl of smell and taste, at once both and yet at the same time neither . This is a coffee that positively screams complexity. It speaks ten languages and says "Yes. Maybe" in every one. There is that unmistakable scent of Gitanne and spent passion as your french lover leaves your apartment at four in the morning of an unseasonably warm Autumn day in Paris. It takes you to a place beyond nostalgia and yet unburdened by regret. There is an aftertaste of tears and honey, Shiraz and schadenfreude. It is not an easy coffee, but I think we're all sufficiently adult in our tastes these days as to have grown beyond instant gratification. This is a challenging but deeply rewarding coffee. It is quite simply, magnificent.

This is a coffee to drink while formulating mathematical problems, or when driving minor European royalty in your XK 120. If God drank coffee, and I believe he has given it up for Lent, this is the coffee he would drink on a Sunday afternoon with a smoked salmon & cream cheese bagel.