I woke up with the sun shining. I felt like a piece of spoiled meat. . . . I dressed and went around the corner to the rented car and drove to an eatery.
”Look sweetness,” I said . . . ”All I want is two eggs three minutes-no more, a slice of your famous concrete toast, a tall glass of tomato juice and a dash of Lea and Perrins, a big happy smile and don`t give anybody else any coffee. I might need it all.”
Raymond Chandler`s detective Philip Marlowe in the short story ”The Pencil”
Oh, Marlowe, get a load of this: Here`s how a contemporary Chicago account executive deals with the morning after:
”I make coffee and open a Coke. I drink the Coke first because the bubbles take care of any queeziness and the sugar and caffeine give me a lift right away. Then I have a cup of coffee because it`s warm and goes better with a roll or muffin.”
Countless undergraduate nights of unsuccessfully trying to fight off drowsiness with coffee have convinced this person that coffee is vastly overrated as a stimulant.
He and others may be heralding a shocking truth: The great American coffee cup no longer runneth over.
Concern about caffeine and its possible ill effects on health have persuaded others to abandon coffee or switch to the decaffeinated version.
Meanwhile, other members of that commercially significant population known as Baby Boomers have labeled coffee as ”bitter” or ”watery” and delivered the coup de grace: ”I just don`t like the taste.” They could, of course, add sugar to coffee. But this sweet-addicted generation is notorious for preferring products that eliminate the need for mixing and stirring.
Most significantly, there is no peer pressure on them to learn to like coffee. Getting hooked on ”java” is no longer part of the rite of passage to adulthood, nor is it necessarily coffee that today`s adults seek if they engage in that American ritual, the coffee break.
Despite all those store displays of pricey coffee beans and coffeemaking accoutrements and the fancy coffee machines in restaurants, coffee consumption continues to shrink. In fact, these affectations of luxury underline a sorry truth: Coffee, once America`s national beverage, may soon become a diversion for the elite. Disc jockeys don`t play Irving Berlin`s ”Let`s Have Another Cup of Coffee” anymore.
The decline, which began just a quarter of a century ago, has slowed. But in 1987, only 50 percent of adult Americans confessed to drinking coffee
(versus 75 percent in 1962), and they drank only 1.67 cups a day (versus 3.12 cups in the halcyon days when the Broadway smash musical ”How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” offered a show-stopping number on the necessity of a coffee break.)
These figures were provided by Steve Gregg, director of marketing services for the Coffee Development Group, a Washington-based organization funded by the coffee-producing nations.
Gregg hasn`t given up on the religion and rituals of coffee drinking. He believes, however, that his beverage has been let down by its own devoted followers and credits the high priests of advertising for lifting the false god of soda pop on high.
To him, ”an image problem” has caused a big dropoff in coffee drinking among Americans under 35. ”Soft drinks and beer have successfully identified with a youthful lifestyle, energy, success; coffee hasn`t,” he said. In other words, Robert Young was no match for Michael Jackson, and the night no longer belongs to Folger`s.
”We have been encouraging the coffee industry to modernize its advertising pitches,” Gregg said. ”Also, we have a mission to help overcome poor quality. Young people aren`t responding to our beverage (in restaurants and vending machines) because it`s weak. Often, there is not enough coffee in coffee.”
A TV commercial running during the Olympics shows a mother and apparently college-aged daughter cheerfully sipping chocolate-flavored coffee as they reminisce about her childhood.
The Coffee Development Group also is beating the drum for iced coffee and flavored coffees and is eager to combat the opposition on its own turf by promoting a coffee cola, ”a beverage that would be portable and served cold to fit the active lifestyle.”
(Bibicaffe, a soda made from espresso coffee, was introduced at the Fancy Food trade show here in August, and another, called Caffre, is on the market.) But the most intriguing of Gregg`s activities is missionary work on college campuses. For five years his organization has been working with on-campus food-service operations to establish coffeehouses for students. Seventy-five such facilities are on about 60 campuses.
Some are noisy alternatives to beer halls. Others are gathering places in the European cafe tradition. ”Princeton`s is traditional, done in dark wood and used for entertaining,” Gregg said. ”USC`s (the University of Southern California`s) is bright neon, very contemporary.”
Certainly coffee is a fit subject for academic study. It has a rich, turbulent history, continues to be of great economic importance, fascinates medical researchers and practitioners of the fine arts alike. Finally, coffee is endemic in the American culture.
Here`s a cram course in coffee:
– School of Economics: According to the Encyclopedia Americana, 1984 edition, coffee is the ”second-most-important product in international commerce on the basis of volume traded and estimated first on basis of value.”
– Cost: Said Steve Gregg, ”When you break down the cost per cup, even for gourmet coffee, it`s only pennies. Less than soft drinks, less than bottled water, less than almost anything but tap water.”
– Department of History: It`s generally agreed that man first encountered coffee in Ethiopia. The folkloric version has a goatherd observing his goats chewing on leaves and berries on a tree, then acting real frisky. He tries the berries, perks up and tells his friends. It was in Arabia, however, that coffee became one of man`s best friends, an object of worship and commerce.
Consumption evolved in three stages over several hundred years: First, berries were dried, crushed, mixed with fat and eaten as a food. Next, skins of berries and green beans were fermented to create a primitive wine. Finally, a beverage was made from roasted beans in the 13th Century.
Coffee was used as a medicine and as an aid to prayer and meditation. By the 15th and 16th Centuries, there was considerable cultivation in the Yemen district of Arabia, and pilgrims to Mecca carried coffee all over the Islamic world. The Arabians prevented the spread of coffee cultivation by allowing only berries that had been boiled or dried to leave the country.
(It wasn`t until the mid-17th Century that coffee was grown outside Arabia, by the Dutch in Ceylon; the first coffee plants didn`t arrive in Java until 1699.)
Coffee`s march westward is well documented. It reached Turkey in 1554, Italy in 1615 and France in 1644. In 1683, Franz Georg Kolshitsky opened the first Vienna Coffee House and won over wine drinkers by adding milk and honey to his filtered coffee. A little more than half a century later, there were more than 2,000 coffeehouses in London.
The hero of coffee`s immigration to the new world is a Frenchman, an infantry captain named Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu. After several failures to transplant seeds to French-ruled Martinique, De Clieu set sail to the island from France once more in 1723 with a single plant in a box covered with a glass frame to help it absorb sunlight. En route he fed it from his own scanty supply of water and defended it against a jealous fellow passenger (perhaps named Saleri) who attacked the plant and tore off one of its branches.
Four years later a resourceful Portuguese named Francisco de Mallo Palheta pirated 1,000 seeds and five living coffee plants from French Guiana and delivered them to Para, Brazil. The result, as the song says, is that they have an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. (In 1984, Brazil produced about a third of the world total.)
– School of Diplomacy: Edoardo Raspelli, writing on coffee in the magazine Italian Wines & Spirits:
”For some it is a fist in the stomach, taken at the end of the meal. For others, it is a caress to the taste buds. . . . I know that its flavor, which is strong to the point of brutality, overpowers the savors of everything that has preceded it. But, then, so what?”
– Merchandising 1, School of Commerce:
The first newspaper advertisement for coffee, in The Publick Adviser, London, 1657, reads ”In Bartholomew Lane on the back side of the Old Exchange, the drink called Coffee, which is a very wholesom and Physical drink, having many excellent vertues, closes the Orifice of the stomack, fortifies the heat within, helpeth Digestion, quickneth the Spirits, maketh the heart lightsom, is good against Eye-sores, Coughs, or Colds, Rhumes, Consumptions, Head-ach, Dropsie, Gout, Scurby, Kings Evil, and many others is to be sold both in the morning, and at three of the clock in the afternoon.” ”All About Coffee,” by William H. Ukers, published in 1935: ”Good coffee, carefully roasted and properly brewed, produces a natural beverage that, for tonic effect, cannot be surpassed, even by its rivals, tea and cocoa. Here is a drink that 97 percent of individuals find harmless and wholesome and without which life would be drab indeed-a pure, safe and helpful stimulant compounded in nature`s own laboratory, and one of the chief joys of life!”
The tag line of a current television commercial telling viewers what they will find at a Union 76 gasoline station in the morning: ”. . . and fresh-brewed coffee for your disposition.”
– Department of Chemistry: Coffee has two chemical compounds, caffeine, which provides the stimulating effect, and caffeol, which contributes flavor and aroma.
– School of Health: Only last month a medical journal reported that coffee drinkers were less likely to contract bronchial asthma. Great news, but because the study was conducted in Italy, it is suspect. Where did they find any Italians who do not drink coffee?
Charges, never fully substantiated, have linked excessive coffee drinking to high blood pressure and stroke, increased cholesterol and heart attacks, peptic ulcers, gout, diabetes and some cancers. Scientists have recommended that women limit their intake of caffeine during pregnancy.
What is excessive coffee drinking? More than five cups a day, in one report. Yet, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, ”2 1/2 to 3 cups may increase a middle-aged man`s risk of heart disease.”
But assessing caffeine intake accurately is difficult, researchers acknowledge. People have problems remembering exactly what they consume. It is difficult to isolate portion sizes and brewing methods. (Though it may be hard to believe, there is less caffeine in an ominously black cup of espresso than in a cup of supermarket coffee; the higher grade of bean used for espresso contains less of the substance.)
Kenneth Davids, in his book ”Coffee” (101 Productions), presents an intriguing view of the controversy over coffee`s effect on health:
”In light of the continuing conflicts in the medical evidence, why are so many popular writers and medical researchers so eager to pin blame on coffee? Partly, I think, because of the frustrations in dealing with degenerative diseases with multiple causes, like heart failure. It would be so marvelous to find a simple dietary `cause` like coffee . . . to cast about for dietary scapegoats. Coffee is ideal for such a role not only because it has no food value but because it makes us feel good for no reason when we drink it. When we get sick, I suspect we tend to fix the blame on something we already feel guilt about. . . . Once upon a time foods were bad for the soul; now they`re bad for our health. Medicine has become, in some circles, a front for religious or cultural snobbery.”
– Contemporary Urban and Suburban History: Why, currently, is there so much interest in ”serious” coffee drinking? Merchants trace the boom in sales of coffeemaking equipment and related products to the recession that ended in 1982. It brought on a demand for small luxuries, upscale items that are expensive only in comparison to the ordinary product in that category.
In addition, high prices and health concerns helped create more discerning coffee drinkers. Once, coffee tasted nearly the same from sea to shining sea, though it came from different producers. Now the small but economically significant band of Americans who insist on the best of everything they can afford takes pride in customizing coffee. To them, going through all the steps to create their ”personal best” pot of coffee is an achievement well worth the time and money.
The romance of coffee: Kenneth Davis on the effect of the sound and smell from a pumping percolator: ”To an American it sounds and smells like coffee and makes him feel good before he even lifts a cup.”
Debunking the romance of coffee: ”Making coffee in a percolator is absolutely the worst method I know,” said Howard Schultz. ”You can burn it.” Schultz is president of Starbuck`s, a Seattle-based coffee company that has opened several stores in Chicago.
– Adult Education Seminar, the Americanization of espresso:
The making of espresso is an Italian cultural rite. It involves preparing a single cup from freshly ground, darkly roasted coffee powder in a special machine. In about 10 seconds, as hot water is forced through the tightly packed powder under pressure, the machine produces 1 to 1 1/2 ounces of extremely intense coffee. (The uninitiated usually wonder where the rest of the coffee went. It`s all there, just very concentrated. To obtain what Italians call ”long” coffee, hot water is added.)
Kenneth Davids in ”Coffee”: ”It is difficult to say how much of the success of the espresso machine is owing to its scientifically impeccable approach to coffeemaking, or its drama and novelty, but given European tastes it certainly does put out a remarkable cup of coffee-absolutely freshly ground and freshly brewed and so quickly brewed that, as an Italian friend of mine says, you get only the heart of the coffee.”
”It`s not espresso if it`s not thick enough to keep sugar on the surface,” an Italian explained to an American friend one morning in Milan.
– Good to the last drop: Though unceremoniously dethroned as America`s most popular beverage, coffee provides a storehouse of memories and memorials. Will there ever be a cola table in our living room? Cola cake at the breakfast table? (Don`t answer that one.) Cola-colored fabrics? Fortunes told from cola grounds? Romantic passages about awakening to the unmistakably haunting odor of freshly opened cola?
The coffeehouse is back, off campus as well as on. The major difference between those scattered through the city and suburbs and the coffeehouses of the 1950s and `60s is that commerce, not art and social activism, is the raison d`etre. Whatever the cultural and political implications, the coffee is much better.
– The most unforgettable impression of coffee: watching it spill and flood across a desk covered with work papers.
