Would you go to the ends of the Earth for a great cup of coffee? No need to travel that far. Puerto Rico will do.
Coffee has been a key crop in Puerto Rico since the early 1800s and coffee trade dominated the island`s economy during the later part of the century.
Hacienda Buena Vista, one of that era`s most productive and innovative plantations, has been restored by Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, and is growing and processing beans-and offering tourists a unique opportunity to observe coffee production and the plantation lifestyle of a bygone era.
Guided tours take visitors through luxurious living quarters that once housed wealthy, worldly hacienda owners and into modest dwellings of their workers, then along trails through scenic growing fields in which coffee plants and lush vegetation cling to precipitous mountainsides.
Guests are shown processing buildings where original machinery, cast in New York by West Point Foundry during the mid-1800s, still is used to wash, dry and process the beans.
Hacienda Buena Vista tour culminates with ”cupping” freshly ground and brewed coffee, an exquisite treat.
Haven`t heard of Puerto Rican coffee? No fault of your own. It isn`t as famous as coffee from Colombia, Jamaica or Kenya.
In fact, Puerto Rican coffee beans aren`t sold in gourmet shops in the United States, nor are they available through mail-order catalogs. Puerto Rican coffee isn`t marketed outside of Puerto Rico because it isn`t grown in sufficient quantity for mass export.
But experts who have cupped Puerto Rican coffee describe the brew in terms not unlike those used by wine tasters.
”The flavor is full-bodied and well-balanced, slightly nutty and earthy, with a slight acidity that gives a lovely lift,” says David Olsen, vice president of Starbucks, a Seattle-based gourmet coffee retailer and mail-order supplier.
”The Puerto Rican beans I`ve tested in several cuppings are superior. Dark-roasted, they yield a brilliantly balanced flavor, related but somewhat different from other beans grown in the Latin American regions. They have the full body and stimulating flavor of a Colombian, but with a touch of acidity and clean elegance of a Costa Rican and the earthy note of a Brazilian.”
In fact, Puerto Rico`s annual coffee crop is 300,000 quintals (one quintal equals 500 pounds), but Puerto Ricans drink 375,000 quintals of coffee each year. But additional beans imported from other nations, particularly Colombia and Brazil, never are blended with native Puerto Rican beans. Puerto Ricans prefer their coffee purely Puerto Rican.
The island has several distinct plantation areas, all in the central mountain range, from Mayaguez in the west to Ciales, Orocovis and Villalba in the east.
In general, coffee grown at high altitudes (3,000 to 5,000 feet) has the strongest and best flavor. Puerto Rican beans are grown at relatively low altitude (500 to 3,000 feet), but exceptionally rich soil, consistently mild temperatures (67 to 80 degrees year `round) and moist climate compensate for the lower altitude.
Despite the disparity between production and consumption, Puerto Rican coffee is available and inexpensive on the island. Prepacked ground coffee is sold for $3.12 a pound ($200 a quintal). Brand names such as Yaucono, Cafe Grano Dorado, Cafe Rico, Cafe Crema and Rioja appear in vacuum-sealed foil briquets on the shelves in branch stores of the Pueblo, Grand and Amigo market chains, and in little bodegas.
Whole roasted beans, holding freshness and flavor longer, are sold in Coffee And . . ., San Juan`s gourmet coffee store at Plaza Las Americas, the island`s main shopping mall, on Las Americas Expressway, the road from San Juan to Ponce. Whole beans are $1 more a pound.
What is the difference between coffee brands, and which are best?
Variations depend upon where the beans are grown (altitude and soil conditions) and how (and for how long) they are roasted. Personal preference is determined only by tasting several brands.
According to legend, coffee was used first in Ethiopia during the 6th Century. A flock of tired goats that fed on leaves and berries from some strange bush became unusually frisky and stayed up all night. Shepherds tried the leaves and berries, experienced the same effect, liked it and incorporated the leaves and berries in their diet. To this day, Ethiopians collect coffee from wild-growing trees.
Coffee reached Arabia during the 1200s. Served in coffee houses that became as important as mosques, coffee was considered a potent medicine and religious potion. When Venetian traders imported coffee beans to Europe, Christians mistrusted the strange brew. But Pope Clement VII, upon sipping some, declared coffee an acceptable drink, to be sold without prescription or restrictions.
By the mid-1600s, coffee houses were social centers in many European capitals, especially London.
To prevent coffee plantations from being established abroad and preserve their monopoly, Arab traders sold only boiled or roasted beans to the rest of the world. Their monopoly was broken in the early 17th Century when Baba Budan, a Moslem, smuggled seven unroasted beans into India. When the beans were planted and grew, the world had a second source of coffee.
Later, coffee plantations were established in Java, Hawaii, the Caribbean and Latin America. Today, Brazil and Colombia are the world`s biggest coffee producers, and coffee is the second most-traded commodity in the world, after oil.
Hacienda Buena Vista is open Friday through Sunday; tours take two hours and are scheduled four times daily, 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. Reservations are required (phone 809-722-5882 weekdays or 809-848-7020 weekends); admission is $4 for adults, $1 for children under 12.
Hacienda Buena Vista is 10 1/2 miles north of Ponce on Route 10, the major highway between San Juan and Ponce. You need a car to get there. All major rental companies have agencies in San Juan and Ponce.
