Friday, December 17, 2004


looking for a gift for the coffee lover who has everything?

if you need to find a gift for a hard-core coffee lover, it can be difficult. so many serious coffee drinkers already have it all -- the great brewer that disperses water in the right pattern and at the right temperature, the fantastic italian espresso machine, the highest quality grinder. . .

the answer here is: donate a gift in their name to that great charity coffee kids. lately i've been talking a lot about rising coffee prices, and retail coffee increases by major international roasters, a trend that continues with a US$0.35 rise in retail coffee prices by large roasters in europe.

this doesn't mean that the human effect of the so-called "coffee crisis" have yet ended. not by a long shot!

farmers still struggle, even as our friends in kona report coffee cherries going for US$1.50 a pound (remember it takes 5 or 6 pounds of cherry to make a pound of beans, setting a base price for kona this year at about US$8-9 a pound even before processing costs etc. come into it!).

it's hard not to read this story and nearly weep, even tho' long-time bccy pals are well aware of the situation, since i've been discussing the problems of illegal immigration, etc. here for years now.

the idea here isn't to bum you out. the idea here is to remember that we can easily help, simply by drinking the same specialty coffee we do now, as well as offering a little to coffee kids' excellent micro-lending and educational projects.

sometimes people say to me, "hey fortune, lots of people support coffee kids now. is there a smaller charity that also needs help?" and i can recommend others, like cup for education and grounds for health, as well as the faith-based lutheran coffee project. . .you can find other fair-trade oriented faith-based projects here.

this morning i opened the home-roast coffee excellent altie and scaa consumer member jim schulman sent me, a kenya he roasted for single-origin espresso. alas, i didn't have a chance to make espresso this morning. . .thanks, jim!

and finally, let me thank the awesome scaa board member mary petit for helping out with the nyc coffee meetup group issue. basically we needed a place to meet that could accomodate anywhere from 3 to 100 people on little notice, and served coffee to scaa standards.

oren suggested mary, who's with juan valdez. and sure enough, juan came thru for us!

mary and i are having coffee next wed. to finalize all arrangements. thanks to oren, mary, and all the great people at the colombian coffee federation.

(note to self: actually what i wanna "ask juan" is what's conchita's a.k.a. lola's shoe size?) but seriously, now let's hope people show up on jan. 12, 2005, 7pm, at the juan valdez cafe, 140 e. 57th near lex. . .(hint!)

p.s.: for how long now have i been telling you, dear readers, to eat your 100g or 3.5oz bars of dark chocolate? why not add another 5 or 6 years?

posted by fortune | 9:43 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments