Friday, March 03, 2006


the classic yrg

and last night i came home to discover another care package from gillies! this one contained my classic yrg, the one that ken davids once called the best yrg ever.

oh yeah, it's wine-y, lemony, caramel. . .yum!

while i did enjoy all those fantastic yrgs from the ethiopian auction -- the kello, the finchwa, the hama -- the ones that famously tasted like harrars -- it's quite a pleasure to return to the benchmark too.

i also noted this article with some amusement. it's pretty common to find these articles that decry the money people fritter away at the mermaid.

what found me rolling on the floor was that the article was british. yup, it wasn't an article about how expensive it is to splurge on that extra tea.

nope, it was an article about coffee, one that was written in a style that took a british love for coffee for granted, and that is what's fantastic.

britain -- soon to be another formerly tea-drinking nation. of course in this case, the u.k. began with java, found it a useful tool to invent the infrastructure of the modern world, and then was led into the dead end of dead leaves.

for a while now i've been able to enjoy the astonished look on people's faces when i ask them what country has the third largest coffee habit in world, based on imports. they also appear stunned when i tell them it's japan.

yuppers, japan is also a formerly tea-drinking nation, and i think britain is fast on its way to joining them. and so i will remind my british readers -- 20% of this blog's audience now comes from the u.k. -- that despite the shocking cost of coffee machines due to the taxes there, you will, dear friends, save tons of pounds by making and enjoying your coffee at home.

it's harder for our british friends, because while coffee is catching on, there is an amazing lack of local artisan roasters, even in the large cities. thus fresh, specialty coffee can be hard to find.

most of the gorgeous c.o.e. coffees i talk about here seem almost impossible to buy there. hopefully, this will soon change as demand continues to increase.

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