Gadfly's Muse

In Praise of.... Coffee (With Apologies to Erasmus)

Image: Beans, Just Beans, 2018, Big Island, HI

“Without my morning coffee I’m just like a dried up piece of roast goat.”  Johann Sebastian Bach

“The powers of a man’s mind are directly proportional to the quantity of coffee he drank.”  Sir James Mackintosh

Desiderius Erasmus wrote a famous work called "In Praise of Folly" - it was a serious work of satire...  coffee is serious business also but I have no intention of satirizing it... I am not such an ungrateful wretch as that!

It all started with Maxwell House ( I think). 

My mother was always up before daylight because, as she constantly reminded me, "the day is half gone" if I slept in until 7 am, so therefore I almost always awoke to the smell of coffee.  We did not have a grinder... that was for rich folks... so it was medium roast grounds perking happily on the stove top that greeted me when I stumbled into the kitchen.  I do not know how young I was when I was first given coffee to drink... it was probably shortly after I was out of diapers.  Mother would sugar it up real good... pour some home churned cream in it and I rapidly became ready for the day.  I still drink it "blonde and sweet", earning sneers of contempt from the purists, but coffee is a very egalitarian life choice and I bow to no one when it comes to taste.  Coffee is memories of home.

It seems as if coffee was always around.  When I walked the sidewalks of Hattiesburg hawking newspapers to passing cars, my travels usually took me past the local A&P grocery store.  Now, if you have never visited one of those stores you have missed a treat.  Now days, because of air conditioning, the smells are not as concentrated, but back then their fresh roasting ovens would send wafts of goodness all the way down the block.  I loved it.  

Down South, "having a cup of coffee" was a social byline.  If a neighbor or relative saw you sitting on the front porch then they would stop... walk up to the house and almost invariably ask "any coffee in the pot?" or something similar.  Often as not there was but if not, another pot was ready shortly.  That was a wonderful social invention.  Etiquette was that a person would stay until the coffee was made and a cup shared.  That was just the right amount of time for conversation, a news tidbit, a story or a laugh or two.  Coffee was community.

In the Navy coffee took on another whole layer of meaning.  No one... to my knowledge... has ever praised Navy coffee for its taste.  It was there... it was to be drunk... and its effect was to set your entire nervous system tingling.  You could not fall asleep on watch having drunk Navy coffee.  Most of the time the empty coffee cups (which were never, by the laws of the Medes and Persians, washed) were layered with a brownish-black stain that made you wonder what it was doing to your stomach.  It was a question that was never asked out loud... we really didn't want to know.  But Navy Life was coffee.

Somewhere along the line, I don't remember when, I had a cup of fine coffee and life began to change for me.  I was not conscious of it but I started noticing the taste differently and started the journey of finding a blend that was "just right" for me.  My wife complains about the whole section of our kitchen cabinets that are taken up with various vacuum jars full of un-roasted beans, large boxes of filters, mugs and other such necessities, but that is the price of obsession.  One cannot be bothered with the mere inconvenience of it.

My standard mix that I have evolved to preferring is a 4/3/4 mixture of Brazilian, Mexican and Colombian un-roasted beans.  These are roasted on the front porch because of the smoke and during the winter I think my neighbors must think we are absolute fools.  I use the "Chemex" system to drip my coffee and it has to be tended properly.  The heated water has to be brought just to the edge of a full boil, not allowed to over heat... the coffee filter has to be pre-hydrated so that it conforms to the top of the Chemex flask.  As soon as the flask is full it has to be transferred to a vacuum thermos so that it doesn't cool off.  I like coffee as hot as I can stand it... just short of blistering the tongue.  

It can be a pain but it sure is worth it.  I usually drink that thermos bottle of coffee right up through lunch and my most often voiced comment is: "That's good coffee."

I have no idea why I suddenly started writing this "musing."  I just finished my morning supply of coffee and am feeling a bit mellow.  It's like the old slogan: "It was good to the last drop."  Life is a lot better with coffee... as old J. S. Bach fully realized.   Without it I suppose I also would feel something like an old piece of roast goat.

Review: Looking For a Nice Outing? Try Delaplane Cellars

Image: "Connoisseurs", Delaplane Cellars, Delaplane VA, 2019

It's about 2 hours, with traffic, from the Millersville area.

These two volunteered to "help" me try out the wines of Delaplane Cellars.  It came highly recommended by a web page I subscribe to (The Discoverer's Blog) that gives folks like me some helpful hints about neat things to do or see.  The author stated that several of this vineyard's wines are featured in some of the more fancy restaurants in Baltimore.  That, plus its limited size (not big enough to be a national product), made it somewhat essential that I go check it out.  The Northern Virginia region west of Manassas is beautiful country also and I thought I might be able to do some photography.  The only thing missing was pleasant companionship and these two rascals filled out the void.

I am 'on the wagon' until after Easter so I was the designated driver and refrained from actually drinking the wines.  These two guys were under no such restriction.  I was able to taste the wine and sample the "nose" without swallowing and so I did get some first hand reaction to the wines we sampled.  Jeremy is studying to become a sommelier and, for a young guy, is pretty knowledgeable about wines.  I learned a bit listening to his interaction with the staff.  The entire tasting experience at Delaplane Cellars (as well as Linden Vineyard which we also visited) was very pleasant and economical.  The folks understand their wines and enjoy talking about them.  I highly recommend visiting them at some point.  (http://www.delaplanecellars.com/)

Now, about the wines.

Perhaps you, like me, never really considered Virginia as a source for good wines.  My first preference in (red) wines is the French Bordeaux.  After that I like Washington State wines and some California vineyards for domestic products as well as German (whites) and Australian (Shiraz).  I've visited the Lake district of New York state and bought a few bottles from there once upon a time.  All that is to say that Northern Virginia / Western Maryland didn't cross my consciousness.  That was a discrepancy that this trip ended once and for all.  There are good wines to be had from this region and Delaplane Cellars has several.

We sampled four different white wines including Viognier, Chardonnay, Petit Manseng and Traminette.  I was not familiar with some of these grapes but I really liked the Viognier and Petit Manseng.  I have never been a Chardonnay fan so it is no surprise that this one didn't ring my chimes.  As far as Chardonnays go, it was good.  The Traminette is comparable to a Gewurztraminer and as a German type wine it commended itself in that category.  It is more fruity than a Riesling and would be very good with a light meal or cheese tray.  It only suffered in comparison to the Viognier and the Petit Manseng.  Both of these wines were exceptional.  Whether just sitting around enjoying conversation and some light refreshment or sitting down to a serious dinner of chicken or fish, either or both of these wines will more than fill the bill.   The Viognier is a "softer" taste that tempts you to hold it in your mouth longer.  It is not as dry as the Petit Manseng which has more in common with a Petit Sirah, Chenin Blanc or Sauvignon Blanc.  It is a very tasty wine and thus would pair very well with strong dishes such as curry or Italian pasta.  Petit Manseng will get noticed.  The Viognier acts as a complement.  Both are excellent and quite reasonably priced.

Then came the reds.  We tasted four of those also: Duet, Springlot, Williams Gap and Left Bank.  These vary quite a bit in cost and taste.  The Left Bank is their signature wine and it and the Williams Gap are not cheap.  All of these wines are blends and thus not easy to characterize in terms of individual grapes.  All have the Cabernet Franc grape in some proportion and thus has that grape's fine nose.  Three also have Cabernet Sauvignon present and Merlot is also used in all four of them.  You might think that they would all taste the same.  That's not the case and that is the beauty and joy of wine tasting.

I and the other two guys all found the Springlot and Williams Gap wines to be the best of the bunch though the Left Bank only barely missed the cut for top two.  It all comes down to individual tastes of course.  All four wines were very good but I found the Springlot and Williams Gap to have more body, balanced acidity, pleasing aftertaste and "nose" than the other two.  It was much more difficult to choose between the reds than the whites which, of course, meant that we had to taste each one more often.  The staff person was more than obliging in this regard and our glasses were kept in plentiful supply.  This didn't have much effect on me since I did not swallow.  You might notice in the image that the other two guys were quite happily enjoying the wine and its effects on this beautiful spring day.

I will have a bottle of two of these wines on the table during our Easter meal this year.  I am looking forward to rejoicing in what God has done for us in giving us all that we need for life and salvation and then throwing good wine into the mix also.