This could well be a sequel to our column last week, and titled “Counting my blessing, Part 2.”
Towards the end of the year, somehow the beatitudes that come our way are made manifold, through friendships and attendant happenstances. Make that friendship, in general — the way I’d still prefer to say coffee instead of coffees even while acknowledging that there are varieties and infinite brands.
Friendship, like coffee, should not be particularized when hailing its general beneficence. That’s why “She’ll buy you a coffee” or “Going to coffees and answering questions” sort of make me cringe to the bone. So old-school am I.
In any case, besides single malt whisky bottles, empty to full, that have recently been burgeoning as a lifetime collection, coffee packs, packets, bags and cans continue to make up a museum of presences in the decreasing space within my lifestyle radius.
For one, a couple of dear friends seem to have made it a point to visit Vietnam of late, and it has nothing to do with our Azkals’ stunning breakthrough triumph in football over the Suzuki Cup champions and hosts.
But thanks to premier poet Marjorie Evasco and PGH Surgery head honcho, if retired, Dr. Serafin “Boy” Hilvano, I now often sip a cuppa java straight out of Viet turf while still relishing our triumph in the beautiful game.
Not once but twice have both these buddies come out of Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi, respectively, with packets of coffee for someone they know truly appreciates the bean, or even just the powder. From Marj came Highlands Coffee’s Culi, as ground powder, and from Doc Boy, after he had shaken the hand of the Vietnamese President, Trung Nguyen Coffee House Blend, also ground.
These pasalubongs came as early as October, if memory serves me right. And of course they’ve both already been consumed, or largely so, in which case the remaining grounds will remain as they are, as souvenir vestiges inside their packets.
It’s one challenge with regards coffee — that one has to consume ground powder close enough to the date of opening the container, and allowing oxygen to start mucking up with the rest.
That is why whole roasted beans are preferable. If you have a grinder, as you must, if you’ve become a coffee freak, you can grind the beans every day, for just enough to brew as freshly ground coffee. Of course even the beans have a shelf life, once their container is opened. And this brings me a second creative problem. I like to vary my coffee, under the same principle that one can’t listen to Beethoven’s Ninth every single morning upon waking, rapturous as it may be as a waker-upper.
My default coffee has been Cafe de Manila’s Barako, the commercial brand, not the generic barako. It comes in a golden pack of 227 grams, whole roasted beans, for only P165, available at Pioneer and Shopwise supermarkets. I like its taste and aroma, and consider it real value-for-money.
It used to be Batangas Brew (special blend regular grind) that I alternated with Starbucks Colombia for my morning and afternoon blend. Sometimes I still procure either of these, or both, and alternate them with the Barako. But for much of this year, especially the latter half, it’s practically been raining coffee.
Travel stints have been responsible for many of the packets of beans or ground that accumulate around my coffee counter, which, next to the home loo, first draws my daily beeline pilgrimage upon regaining consciousness at mid-morn.
In foreign cities, I scour the grocery shelves for various items of interest, but primarily for coffee I haven’t tasted. Thus, having recently gained niches in my place of domestic morning worship are: Maatouk Lebanese Coffee Gourmet Blend, said to be 100 precent fine-ground Brazilian Arabica (which I think I bought in Dubai); the Carrefour concessioned Pur Arabica Bresil, which is also ground; Coffee Peace Arabica Coffee (which came from good friend Bimboy Peñaranda, the poet-scholar); a Starbucks Caffe Verona given by goodfriend poet-scholar-critic Jimmy Abad; and Kanlaon Philippine Mountain Coffee from the Highlands collection of Tony Sevilla, who runs the distinctive Hacienda resto at Transcom Bldg. across Tiendesitas, as well as a stall at Tiendesitas’ food court.
Well, Marj has also recently been to Bali for the writers’ festival, and so I also have a round carton of Bali Coffee to add to the growing, unopened collection.
And I still have a couple of sachets from King Bedan Lino Dionisio of Tongkat Ali with Ginseng Coffee. Tongkat Ali is of course the Southeast Asian region’s version of an energy provider for encounters with Aphrodite.
A fortnight ago, at a bazaar in Valle Verde 5, I ran into the wonderful Reyes couple again, Lorie and Terri, who have established the ValleNet Corporation out of a home industry — that is, air-roasting select beans from various areas in the country, as well as some from Kenya.
Last Christmas was when I first made the acquaintance of Roaster’s Juan’s, a coffee brand that has now expanded into several editions. Lorie, who often travels north to discover and decide on his bean selections, has recently come up with two new packets, in cobalt blue and dark red, to distinguish two different Arabica blends.
He explained that the roasted-beans contents of the red bag generally come from the Cordilleras, while those of the blue bags are from an out-of-the-way barangay in La Trinidad called Wangal — and that they made for a very light, delicate and refined coffee brew.
I admire Lorie for his vocation or advocacy that is the crafting of excellent coffee. He and Terri run their operations in their backyard, but have now been contracted to provide special brews for certain cafes and hotels.
Should you want to try out any of their fine Roaster Juan’s editions, they’re at 18 San Miguel Court, Valle Verde 5, Pasig. You may call 706-3694 or 359-6387, or email terri122@gmail.com.
At about 7 p.m. on the first Tuesday of the coming year, on Jan. 4, Lorie Reyes will appear as the solo guest to talk about his coffee expertise in the one-hour TV talk show Illuminati with Krip and Trix on GNN Channel 8 at Destiny Cable. We are happy to have him as our very first guest of 2011 in our arts and culture show.
While we’re at it, I’d like to thank my co-host, the gorgeous Trix Syjuco, one of our most notable performance artists besides being a budding poet, for her Yuletide gift of a splendid box of Glenmorangie Original Highland Single Malt Whisky from Scotland — “Perfected by the Sixteen Men of Tain” — replete with two special Glenmorangie tulip glasses.
It didn’t make it to my list of single malt blessings cited in last week’s column, so it receives special mention here. It was given only last week, right after we had interviewed our last guests for the year: Rico Manlapaz who curates the Artis Corpus Gallery that’s an adjunct of Sining Kamalig Gallery on the fourth floor of the Gateway mall at the Araneta Center; and Dr. Leo Garcia, former dean of humanities at AdMU, but whom we billed as art collector/philosopher for the episode that dwelled on the current tandem exhibit, “Experience the Face”/“Looks Kill” at the two galleries.
(By the by, it will be recalled that dear Leo was the generous donor of our Irish whiskey blend bottle, Writers Tears, which we still have to open, in the company of poet Marne Kilates and fictionist Sarge Lacuesta — the first two volunteers.)
This episode titled “Experiencing the Face in Art” was first aired last Tuesday, but will be replayed tomorrow, at 7 p.m., with a replay at midnight. By which time I might still be luxuriating in the warm embrace of Glenmorangie, and hours later, imbibing the coeval coffee, likely a brew of Roaster Juan’s — hopefully eventually alternated with an expected traditional gift at this time of year: roasted beans as well from the Asin Road farm of National Artist BenCab, grown in the very shadow of his excellent museum of mountain presences.