One Moment In Time

If it’s ever possible to have a time out in my business, then Saturday morning tends to be that moment. It has been a tradition for many years now that at 9 o’clock I play uninterrupted tennis with my friends and heaven help anyone from work who tries to interrupt this golden hour and a half.

As part of this tradition I make my friends coffees which I bring to the court. It’s an eagerly awaited treat, almost as important as the non-interruptions. 

Last Saturday I shared our Myanmar Blue Mountain natural processed coffee. This is a coffee I discovered when I visited Myanmar back in February this year. Because the coffee is made at work I tend to have it made in an Americano style using around 18g of coffee and ¾ filling a 12 oz paper cup with no milk.

As with so many things in life we rarely take a moment to consider what we consume. Coffee often fits into this category; that is until you taste something extraordinary which in this case stops you completely in your tracks.

Natural processed coffee is a bit like marmite and can get a bit of getting used to, but once understood is a process style I love. When the coffee cherry is picked, rather than being “pulped” the skin is left on the coffee bean to dry out on the patio. In the case of Myanmar this may well be on raised beds. As a result the fruit in the skin permeates the coffee bean and in turn gives a distinct flavour to the coffee.

On this occasion the taste took me right back to the farm. As in Myanmar the sky was clear and blue and if you shut your eyes for a moment the aroma was of fresh coffee cherries drying in the heat of the afternoon sun.  If only a time machine had been invented and I could quickly transport my tennis friends to Myanmar so that they could appreciate such a precious moment.

Great coffee my friends say as they walk onto court but if only they had the capacity to taste and smell my memory they would have appreciated how understated were their comments.