Memoirs: Coffee & Wine

I wonder which Roman I am channeling? Why is it some smells and some flavors transport us to another dimension? I have noticed this with coffee and wine, and also with sweet curry. Something about the insane aroma and kicking hard flavour burst coffee give me just puts me somewhere else. If my body could take it, I would drink it all day long, cappuccino after espresso, after latte. Then around 5 or so I would switch to wine, and again if my body could take it, I’d drink that til I went to bed.

When I drink wine, this is what happens to me. The cool crisp sharp stab of a perfectly chilled thin Chardonnay is the best taste EVER. Planeta, takes the stab out and rolls it into your mouth like a slow bay wave while managing to have the perfect dryness and clarity. Then, as the drynesss whisks through my palette and ices down my throat, it tingles. All of a sudden I feel lighter. More sophisticated. I feel…more intelligent. The tingling gets stronger with each sip. I like to take the tiniest sips possible so I can just become one with the crisp whack of butteriness, then tingling. And Chardonnay makes me feel sexy. As soon as I’ve had like three sips I feel sensual and excited about the possibilities of whatever is happening right then. It is enlivening and I think I get a lot more “forward” if I am flirting with you. The bouquet of dry wines fascinates me deeply. It doesn’t smell as much as it whisps your olfactory senses into translucence, and it somehow also whitens them. It’s like a sexy version of Vicks vapo rub, briskly invigorating your sense of fragrance.

I also love a deep red round and feisty Merlot, that breathes in with me, a rich and resonant robust parfum de la vie. Merlot’s bouquet oozes into my nostrils heavily sinking into every open receptor like bean bag chairs. Then it wetly wallows there a while, relentlessly. Alas, red wine makes my face turn roughly the color of sangria. If I am with someone who I won’t care if my face is bright red, I’ll have it. Plus it makes your teeth purple. So I probably won’t drink it if I think you’re cute, or if I think you might consider kissing me later. No Chianti was ever a bad thing, but a strong Cabernet or Merlot with a depth of a thousand barrels cannot be argued with. Oh did I just end a sentence with a preposition? Well, now, Englishmen shouldn’t have come up with so many idiomatic expressions that end with “with” if they didn’t want us to use them at the ends of sentences. I suppose, I should not be using these expressions anyway due to their triteness, but I just can’t help it sometimes. But as my nose is rapt with the red wine, this ruby-hued elixir does this ineffable thing to me. It wells up deeply with the first long sip. Then it rolls, and rolls, like thunder in my mouth. It somehow goes deep into my soul while still mulling over my tongue. Then as it rolls more, and begins to sink down deeper, it warms me from the inside out. It melds with my insides like they were never separate entities. And I get deep. Like I am already deep, so to go even deeper, well, most people cannot even handle this. I most carefully choose my company if I shall imbibe in any sort of Tempranillo or Old Vine Zin. For only a few can manage what wells up in me as red wine rolls on my tongue.

When I drink good coffee (rare in this day of Starbucks and Coffee Plantations), this is what

happens to me. My throat, then chest, then stomach warm up to the temperature it would be were a heating pad laying on me. Then, I feel a cozy, crackling fire surrounding me and it makes me want to hold the coffee closer to my body. I smile a warm, silly smile that says, do not bother me, I am “being” right now. When I adjust to the warmth, I then begin to focus on the flavor. It cleans my tongue and makes it empty, then slams it with a bitterness that is so amazingly all encompassing it throws me off balance if I am upright (which I try never to be for that tells me I am in a hurry and not doing my coffee the justice of sitting down and fawning all over it). Once I belly that first kick in the mouth, I find myself moving my tongue and lips all around to get each second of flavor that sip gave me. The roof of my mouth seems particularly jiggy with the whole thing. Then the backs of my cheeks start to swell with deep satiation. Somehow, now I begin to breathe more clearly, and enjoy my surroundings (which may have annoyed me just moments earlier). I am not a total coffee snob, I do need a tiny bit of flavoring in it. But not so much that you lose what the coffee should smack of (oops another preposition–and no idiomatic excuse this time!). Did I mention the aroma? Oh. My. Gosh. The smell is like health and freedom and a rocket ship blast off and a campfire simultaneously…coffee is a memory smell. I can call it up just like a memory and smell it as if it were brewing right in front of me. It’s the smell of freshly risen sunshine and that if anything wasn’t going well, it is now. It’s the smell of earth and desert rains. It’s the smell of home.

I have tried to make coffee at home, it is NOT the same. I have determined two reasons for this. One, in a coffee shop the fact that someone else is making it for you, and they are totally Zen about doing that, causes the flavor to be better. Two, there is no way to have all the proper equipment you could need to achieve the same results in a normal sized kitchen. I know. My sister put together a business plan for a coffee shop and WHOA there is a lot of stuff. Big stuff. Complicated stuff. And if you’ve ever tried to steam milk, well, you’ll know that alone is a dealbreaker. The bottom line is, coffee is only as joyous as the place you experience it. It’s also really nice to experience it with other people around. There’s an aura in a good coffee shop that makes it even more fulfilling to drink a double shot almond milk Cappucinno with a scoop of chai powder just because you can. Drink coffee in different countries... anyplace in Montecatini, Italy, or on the pier by the ferry boat in Oslo, Norway. In Oslo, and sometimes in Italy, they put cinnamon on their cappuccinos and MAN is that good. I drank seven Cappucinnos in a row once in Italy. I have never been happier.

It’s also a proven fact that technically a place can have the best roasted, free trade, ancient blend, organic coffee, and have an “I look cool by hating life” apathetic asshole serving it and somehow the coffee will taste bad. It’s a proven fact, trust me.