Black Gold. Antony Wild
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that had been hitherto literally unthinkable, and to begin to adapt his environment to his needs. It is tempting to wonder whether the proliferation of wild coffee trees in the same Ethiopian highland forests could also have had a hand in the process. Coffee has always been associated with speed of cognition and expression, and the sudden dawn of self-awareness in the Genesis story concerning the forbidden fruit of the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ is something that could have been prompted by a psychoactive substance such as caffeine. Such awareness (or, perhaps, gnosis) is also an attribute of language and thought, without which it is quiescent. To place the bright red coffee cherry centre stage in the story of the Fall is altogether a more inspired piece of casting than the choice of a lowly Golden Delicious; imagine coffee berries driving their eaters into a caffeine-fuelled frenzy of quick-fire contention and ingenious thinking, engines of brain evolution. The previously docile brains of Homo sapiens sapiens would have been ill prepared for such an assault. Likewise the Ethiopian Highlands, with their sumptuous vegetation and spectacular scenery, are a properly marvellous setting for the mythical Garden of Eden. Even today the wild coffee trees grow under the forest canopy on the escarpments of the Rift Valley, their white flowers heavy with a scent close to that of jasmine. The coffee cherries, the stones of which make two coffee beans, ripen in clusters as they grow from green through gold to a rich red colour, which stands out in bold contrast to the smooth, luscious dark green leaves of the tree. They were doubtless suitably tempting to our early ancestors. The description of the Tree of Knowledge contained in the rediscovered Old Testament Book of Enoch could easily suggest the coffee tree, with its depiction of delicious fragrance and clusters of fruit – and that previously missing book, supposedly suppressed because of its salacious content, was unearthed by the eighteenth-century explorer James Bruce in, strange to say, Ethiopia.
At this point it would seem appropriate to introduce this native of Ethiopia, the species Coffea arabica of the sub-genus Eucoffea of the genus Coffea of the family Rubiaceae of the order Rubiales of the sub-class Sympetalae of the class Dicotyledonae of the sub-kingdom Angiospermae from the kingdom of Vegetables. Left to its own devices the Arabica coffee plant can grow up to twenty feet high; its lush, dark-green, ovoid leaves are about six inches long, and it produces small white flowers with the characteristic heady jasmine-like fragrance. The coffee tree usually flowers once in a season, but in some countries where it has been transplanted from its homeland, such as Colombia, it may blossom and produce cherries at various stages of ripeness throughout the year. The flowers are pollinated by insects and the wind, and go on to form ‘drupes’, which are infant coffee berries, and which grow over a period of six months to form bunches of cherries that in many respects resemble the bright red domestic eating cherry.
As perhaps was the case with our putative Adam and Eve, ripe coffee cherries are a tempting proposition to some animals and birds, giving rise to some esoteric practices. Kopi luak is a fine Sumatran coffee, much valued in Japan, made from beans gathered from the dung of Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, the common palm civet, which skulks around the plantations at night selecting only the finest, ripest cherries. The beast digests the skin and the pulp of the cherry, the mucillage and the parchment surrounding the bean, and even the final obstacle, the thin ‘silverskin’. In so doing it achieves exactly what modern ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ processing technology seeks to emulate – that is, the complete separation of the core coffee bean from all its protective layers. The civet cannot digest the hard beans, however, and they pass through its system: they are picked out of the civet’s dung because the flavour imparted by the digestive process is highly prized once the beans are cleaned and roasted. Indian monkeys, parrots, and mongooses are also supposed to subscribe to this recondite method of coffee processing, and their coffee byproducts likewise are said to attract local enthusiasts. Not all such coffees pass entirely through an animal’s system: the spread of coffee cultivation in the Spanish Philippine Islands in the nineteenth century was evidently greatly assisted by Pardasciurus musanga, a small mammal which ate the flesh of the cherries but spat out the bean, which was then ready for germination.
Insects, however, find their enjoyment of the coffee cherry considerably lessened by its caffeine content. While the leaves and flowers of a coffee plant contain slightly less than 1 per cent caffeine by dry weight, the pulp of the cherry contains a little more, and the bean itself around 3 per cent. Nature has so ordered things that the highest levels of caffeine are to be found in the most important part of the plant, its seed. This is because caffeine is nothing more than a natural insecticide, and the high caffeine levels protect the seed from unwanted attention. Hapless insects who ingest too much find that their nervous systems go into overdrive. By the miracle of international trade, the same symptoms can be observed in office workers the world over.
The other species of coffee grown commercially around the world is C. canephora, the best-known variety of which is Robusta. The plant was first spotted by explorers in Uganda in 1862, where it was then used by the native Buganda tribe in a blood-brother ceremony. However, it was not until its rediscovery in the Belgian Congo in 1898 that it was thought worth cultivating. This was after outbreaks of hemileia vastatrix or ‘coffee rust’ had devastated the Arabica coffee plantations of Ceylon and the Dutch East Indies. Robusta coffee is, as the name implies, more robust than its Arabica cousin. It grows at lower altitude (and contains as much as double the amount of caffeine, perhaps in order to deal with the more persistent insects of the tropical lowlands), it tastes coarse and rubbery, and has very little to recommend it other than resistance to disease, which is in itself a recommendation only to planters. It was initially banned from the New York Coffee Exchange as a ‘practically worthless bean’. Being considerably cheaper than Arabica, it can be found in all sorts of less salubrious locations: instant coffee, cheap blends, vending machine coffee and the like. Its harsh flavour and heavy caffeine kick are easily identified. Introduced only a century ago, with the sudden rise to prominence of Vietnam (see chapter 18), it threatens to become a major force in the market, replacing the subtle refined flavours and aromas of Arabica coffee with its pestilential presence. It has some uses in espresso blending, but otherwise it is Arabica coffee’s crude, boorish, sour, uncivilized, black-hearted cousin, and true coffee aficionados rightly give it a very wide berth. No coffee-taster worth his or her salt would seek to maintain that a Robusta coffee was better in flavour terms than all but the worst-produced Arabica: its only merit is its price. Nonetheless, nearly half of the coffee sold in the UK is Robusta, and even in Italy, a country which celebrates its coffee culture like no other, a third of the coffee drunk is Robusta, whilst nearly a quarter of the coffee drunk in the USA is Robusta. The country that has thus far remained most immune to its pernicious influence is Norway, where it is still virtually unknown. Of global coffee consumption today, one-third is of a low-quality coffee variety that scarcely existed a century ago, and the proportion is growing. We are witnessing the triumph of the ‘practically worthless bean’ in our coffee cups. At the same time, ironically, with prices at their current levels of 35 cents per pound, Robusta coffee is even more practically worthless than its Arabica cousin.
Despite its widespread use, this black sheep in the coffee family receives an almost total informational blackout when coffee companies come to describe their wares. There are no illustrated pamphlets extolling the virtues of Togolese Robustas over those of Uganda, no analyses of the typical flavour characteristics of the Cameroon variety. Whereas many companies might draw attention to the fact that their blends are ‘100 per cent Arabica’, few would proudly point out that they use 50 per cent Robusta. This is simply because all coffee professionals know that Robusta coffee is a cheaper, inferior type and are unwilling to admit that they have any association with it. Arguably, if consumers really understood the extent to which their coffee has become tainted by this parvenu coffee bean, they would turn away in droves. Even so the creeping infiltration of cheap Robustas into mainstream blends is noticeable. What might once have been a reasonable coffee from a vending machine has changed over the last few years into an unpalatable, caffeine-kicking monstrosity. It seems, however, that many consumers are largely unaware of the change, although there is some evidence to suggest that the additional caffeine content of coffee with a higher proportion of Robusta is leading to a drop in consumption.
If proto-humans had experienced Arabica coffee in their highland fastness it would have been in its raw form, whereas today it is used almost exclusively