Drippy

The Maui Tropical Plantation sits nestled in the shadow of Mauna Kahawalai, the eminent mountains on the island's west side. From where I stand I have a clear view of Iao Valley, though the valley itself rolls full with nimbus fog drifting down from the adjacent peaks. Beyond the point the sky is cloudless, a sheet of blazing turquoise quartz stretching to all horizons. An exuberant growth of coconut trees surrounds me. Heliconia and plumeria border the road, fluttering in the gentle breeze, pausing, fluttering some more. It is in this paradise that I will see what I came to find. It is here where Mauian coffee is born.

Rows of coffee trees file the vast tillage on either side of the road. Not the handsomest crops, especially when belted by the ornamental red ginger and bouganvilla, but they do smell hazily of jasmine. I see a thin scattering of coffee cherry bunches hidden in the trees nearest to me. The guide tells us they should have already been processed, but this year's harvest has been delayed by the profuse rains. A few fallen cherries remain ignored by the stray roosters, who pick at macadamias instead. As we travel down the road I see a tented place where coffee seedlings grow. Right now they stand as tall as the distance between my thumb and index finger outstretched. Provided good conditions they will be ready to harvest in seven years.

After we return from the cropland I walk to the roasting room. The size of a large bedroom, with grainy timber walls and some shelves of packed coffee beans, the room has sitting in its center a drum roasting machine of Carl Diedrich's design. The master roaster, a swarthy native with dark curly hair and white hot eyes, looks disdainfully at a computer podium which controls the roasting process automatically; he would rather trust his intuition. He puts a hose to a large burlap bag on the floor labeled Jesus Mountain, vacuums a batch of raw beans into the roasting drum, and starts the machine. Through a small glass portal on the front I see the beans tumbling about, like little pebbles of unworked jade.

Ku a 'aha lua, a Hawaiian proverb, means "A standing together in twos." A time for cooperation, not conflict. The master roaster draws attention to the coffees on the shelves. He has given equal space and billing to the local competitors' roasts. "I love their coffee," he says warmly, "and it's different than ours." He says good coffee, like good wine, is best enjoyed comparatively. Every grower bestows its coffee with a unique complexity and nuance, its own special character, its pu'uwai. Who would drink only one variety of wine? Who would drink from only one vineyard? The roaster possesses an understanding long forgotten — a sense of the life of the land, of culture, and of discriminating taste. He loves the competitors' coffee, and they love his too.

Twelve minutes later, the beans in the drum have turned deep chocolate, crackling once and then twice before the master roaster presses a switch and they empty into the cooling tray with a seething hiss and an upwelling of dove smoke. We spend a few minutes afterward cupping the Moloka'i Mule Skinner, and I admire just how easily it goes down black. Indeed, new and extraordinary tastes fill my mouth, pungent but highly agreeable. "So many overroasted coffees out there," the roaster warns me. "Nobody should have to turn a superior cup into Maalox in order to appreciate it." I am a changed man.

Fine coffee, like all great things in life, suffers from an awful and paradoxical dilemma. The more people discover its greatness, the more its greatness gets suffocated by its own popularity. What began as fellowship among connoisseurs became the widespread offering of the fast-food industry, like mites infesting a fallen coconut. A McDonald's patron probably doesn't think much about whether his premium Arabica blend has notes of banana or cedar, whether it was wet-processed or dry-processed. But for every seemingly lost art we find places like this plantation and people like the master roaster, still holding the spark that ignited the great java obsession. And for those of us who care to stop and appreciate the lore and greatness of fine coffee, the connoisseurs will be waiting for us, in the hidden places, with French presses in their hands and lively smiles on their faces.

Kill da Starboyz

"Life may be brutish, nasty, and short, but it need not be mediocre." That's what my best friend said to me this morning, and let me tell you — there is not only truth but timeliness in his comment. Last evening, all Starbucks stores across the nation closed their doors for three hours so that the new CEO could give over a hundred-thousand baristas a pep talk about improving customer service. The new CEO is, of course, the old CEO, Howard Schultz, the original Starbucks architect. Howard is a visionary, and puritanical in his beliefs about good coffee. And if my best friend told Howard the words he told me, Howard would have to unequivocally agree.

You see, Starbucks has become the classic example of a major flaw in the spirit of the American enterprise, which is this: a decent thing now is better than a fantastic thing five minutes from now. Starbucks wants to spare you those five minutes. They put stores within a hundred yards of each other to save you a minute of driving. They don headsets and install drive-thru lanes to save you the minute it takes for you to get out of your car, slam the door, and walk to the establishment. They use automated espresso machines to save you a minute of waiting for your drink. They save you two more minutes by offering reduced-fat breakfast sandwiches with your coffee so you don't have to make the additional stop at McDonald's. There's your five minutes.

There's nothing wrong with saving five minutes, but Starbucks pays a steep penalty for it. They end up with cashiers who don't bother to give you so much as a nod or a smile when you approach the counter, and headset-harnessed baristas who never listen. They end up with coffeehouses that no longer smell like actual coffee, but a peculiar combination of ham, burnt toast, and the stuff that new televisions come packaged in. And putting a store on every street corner and inside every supermarket so waters down the value of the brand that whenever a new store opens up, instead of being met with enthusiasm and anticipation, it is met with umbrage and — in the best case — indifference.

For a company to position itself as the king of convenience — the way McDonald's does — may be fine, but foolish Starbucks also exemplifies another flaw of the American enterprise: the merely decent things you foist upon your customers should be touted as fantastic things. Starbucks boldly calls itself the premier purveyor of fine coffee, and charges premier prices accordingly. The rest of us consider its quality about the same as what a bagel shop offers. Silly me, you mean to say that the bitter, heavy, scalding-hot foam-soup I just paid three dollars for is actually the superlative traditional cappuccino? My mistake. And I'll also take your advice and get the sausage biscuit and a Joni Mitchell CD, since no man in his right mind would walk out of a Starbucks with nothing more than one of your exquisitely prepared coffee drinks.

The lost Starbucks customer experience doesn't stop at its viral growth strategy or its corporate self-deception. Starbucks commits its share of petty crimes as well, like bastardizing the way people order their drinks. And it's not just how the different sizes are called. I remember one day at Starbucks how much my heart went out to a poor lady in front of me when she tried to order a skinny latte. "What flavor syrup do you want in that?" the barista asked. "No no, just a skinny latte is all," she replied. "Oh, I'm sorry," the barista retorted, "what you're asking for is a non-fat latte. A Starbucks skinny latte by definition comes with a sugar-free syrup." Great, there they go again, reinventing the established nomenclature to mystify their customers and insult the industry. I wanted to disembowel the cashier and burn down the store.

Howard has a big job ahead of him. The Starbucks I remember — back when things were better — had customers happily loitering at the pickup counter, chatting idly with the baristas about the ideal eighteen to twenty-two second espresso shot, luxuriating in their hand-made double short cappuccinos with meringue-like foam and pretty much having one hell of a good time. On the slow mornings, the staff would gather around and sip different varietals and philosophize about them, and baristas like me got so excited they just had to host a bean seminar or two, and occasionally a coffee trivia night. The Starbucks I remember had connoisseurs instead of customers, unafraid to tell the new baristas, "Yo, that's not how you make it." The Starbucks I remember had class. And all of this for the low, low price of five minutes.

Dunkin' Donuts may appear to be Starbucks' big competition, but I know in Howard's mind the real enemy remains the independent coffeehouse. The good independent coffeehouses value artisanship. They have baristas that give your drink their single-minded concentration and triple-check with you to make sure it's to your liking. They cultivate an atmosphere of fellowship, local culture, and God forbid a little snobbishness. You go to them because your friends tell you to, not because their logo is affixed to every tenth storefront and featured in every romantic comedy. Frankly, they give a damn about your drink.

I like what Starbucks was, I like what it has the potential to be, and I want it to succeed. If only the boardroom can take those precious five minutes they have saved everyone else to sit back quietly and think about what made Starbucks great in the first place, then they might just come to their senses. Because sometimes five minutes is all it takes.