July, 2015, World Cruise: Coffee and Tea

I have to preface this entry by stating that the best coffee in the world is 100% Kona coffee.  Mike and Mary MacCheyne's coffee, MnM Kona coffee is very reasonable and they are expert coffee farmers, doing it all themselves to assure quality control.  Order it direct at www.mnmkonacoffee.com. Gourmet estate coffee at a reasonable price.

Whenever we visited a coffee growing country, we bought some local coffee.  It started in Viet Nam at a large gift shop/rest stop.  This was called "weazle coffee".  We couldn't read the rest of the label so we assumed it was the coffee we had heard about where the small weazle ate the coffee cherry and pooped it out and then they gathered the beans and processed them as specialty coffee.  This coffee was about $10 per pound, however, so we were not sure if it was the famous one or not, or even if it just has the trade name weazel coffee.

Weasel coffee and Luwak coffee.  The "weazel" sure looks like a squirrel to me.  Luwak shows an actual civit which we saw at this coffee store in Bali

After our Bali tour of the island, we begged our guide to take us to buy the genuine Luwak coffee.  We wntered through lush garden walkways to the rear of the property to see the civits in cages.  A lovely lady and her assistant prepared a cup of the coffee for about $8.00 a cup.  David had a cup of medium roast and pronounced it smooth, velvety and delicious.  I was already in the gift shop comparing sizes and prices.  The shop also sold high end souvenirs.  We ended up buying two bags of 200g of coffee for about $125.00.  It is sold by the gram, but roughly 1 lb of coffee would be over $150.00 at this outlet.

Kingdom of Tonga coffee and Huatulco, Mexico coffee

The rest of the coffees we purchased were less than $10.00 per bag.  We bought the Tongan coffee at the pier where merchants set up tents to sell to the cruise ships.

The Cafe Huatulco in Mexico was sold at a coffee cafe in the middle of the town square near the cruise pier.  It was a local cafe, not necessarily for tourists.  The young beautiful woman poured us each a cup to taste when she saw our interest in buying her coffee.  As with every freshly prepared, fresh roasted coffee, it was delicious.  She had medium or dark roast, beans or ground.  We never buy ground coffee.  You have no idea what the size, shape or color of the beans were, freshness, or even if it is all from the same farm.  Lots of defects can be masked by buying ground coffee.

We talked about where the coffee was grown and how, whether they had the coffee berry borer beetle, etc.  Soon her mother joined us.  She is the owner of the large coffee farm in the green mountains we saw as we drove back from our tour.  I think she said they had 700 acres at an elevation about 3,000 ft.  The language barrier prevented us from learning much more.  It was delicous coffee.  We decided to buy a pound, and also saw this bag of chocolate chunks which is a drink or even a candy.  We went to pay and it was only $10 for both!  

Guatamala and Nicaraguan coffee 

David went to the El Barretal coffee farm in Guatamala while I went to the Rosario beach.  His ride there was over an hour.  The farm was at 4,000 ft.  The hacienda held musical instruments like guitars and ukuleles like they played music a lot.  They had 200 acres.  The processing equipment was for large quantities, but much older models.  The beans were dried on a big patio by the house with no hoshidana roof if it rained.  There was a gas fired drier and a 200 lb coffee roaster.

Kilambe coffee beans from Nicaragua were purchased also at one of the stands set up for our cruise ship by the port.

Costa Rican coffee beans, and Panamanian coffee

We purchased the Costa Rican coffee at the bird park gift shop.  Our gift shop brought on board Panamanian souvenirs.  We bought this bag of coffee beans there.  We never got off the ship in Panama.

David bought this coffee in Cartegena when at a coffee shop with Jerry and Marion, the bridge instructors.

Tea

In Asia, we were able to purchase some tea.

This is 8 treasure chrysanthemum tea.  Unlike the other teas, I can read the box.  The ingredients are rock sugar, Jujube (red date), Longan, green tea, chrysanthemum, goji berries, raisin, Tremella.  It is from Zhangzhou, fujian, China.  food.TENFU.com, TCRM@tenfu.com.  When Bonnie Godfred and I were in China in 2000 I bought some of this tea.  It comes in individual packets.  You can brew three cups from one packet.  The rock sugar is probably what makes it taste so good, but it is very special.  I think this cost $7.  Flavia bought it for me.  When I asked in a tea store, I never got an answer, but she knew where and how to buy it.  She got a box for herself.

These cannisters we bought in Kaohsiung, Taiwan from the merchants at the pier.  The red is oolong tea, best quality.  The blue is alishantra mountain oolong tea.

The top box is ginger tea.  There are 20 packets of brown sugar squares infused with ginger.  It is very strong and one square makes a lot of tea.    That was the best instruction I was able to get from the tea seller at the market where we bought it somewhere in Asia.  I think it was about $15.00.  At home, it makes one whole tea pot of tea, about 5 cups.  It is quite delicious with brown sugar and the sharp tang of fresh ginger flavor.  When I cleaned the teapot there were chopped up pieces of fresh dried ginger in the bottom.  This is really nice ginger tea!

The bottom box is litchi tea made from green tea and lychee.  At our tea tasting in Xiamin, this was the most popular green tea which almost everyone bought.  But it was about $20.00.

I also bought a small bag of green tea which is delicious but I have no recollection where I got it and can't read the bag at all.  But the color of the bag is green, so it must be green tea (right?)

We have to confess that in New Zealand, in Picton, we had that delicious lunch of blue green lipped mussels with a glass of New Zealand wine.  So we bought a bottle of wine at the store on the corner.  New Zealand white sauvignon blanc wine is delicious.  We savored it for quite awhile.

Tasting notes of the various coffees and teas are to come.