I’m no expert when it comes to wine. I’ve been told that a critical element in the proper evaluation of wines is bouquet or aroma. My nose isn’t overly sensitive. I had allergies as a child and a teen and have never tried to teach my brain all of the subtle differences in aroma. Add to that the fact that we drink very little at our house. We have a glass of wine with friends a couple of times a month at the most. I know that a true connoisseur evaluates visual elements such as color and clarity and have a specific vocabulary for describing the various flavors and aromas that the wine expresses. I also know that there is a lot of ritual involved in wine tasting; evaluating the cork, viewing properly, swirling the wine in the glass, evaluating the aroma before taking the wine into the mouth. There is even a special ritual for spitting out the wine and cleansing the palate before going on to the next wine.

When I buy a bottle of wine, which I rarely do, and most often do as a gift to someone else, I pay attention to the price. Like other purchases I do have my limits and pretending that I have more financial resources than I do seems pointless and silly. I know just a little bit about varieties of grapes and names of wines. From there, I usually choose the wine by the label. It is not a sophisticated system and one that a connoisseur would certainly turn his nose up at. But then an expert in the English language would be equally dismayed at the dangling participle at the end of the last sentence.

Given all of the culture and tradition and ritual and general hoopla that surrounds wine, I’m a bit dismayed at the growth of contemporary coffee culture in the United States. That arena is starting to fill up with snobs and I fear that it is becoming as uppity as wine these days.

Susan and I were early to have a coffee grinder and purchase beans from specialty roasters. When we lived in North Dakota, the closest roaster was 150 miles away and I looked forward to trips to that town to purchase fresh coffee. This time of the year is when the first fresh beans from Central America begin to arrive and I learned a bit about the seasons of coffee and different varieties from around the world. In those days we also used canned coffee for our home brewing because we didn’t always have access to fresh beans.

Before I lived in a town with a Starbucks, I had purchased a pump espresso machine. The coffee maker was very expensive compared to other methods we had previously employed to make our coffee. We have had stovetop percolators, electric percolators, electric drip machines and a variety of simpler devices such as a funnel for paper filters through which you pour boiled water and a coffee press. For great coffee flavor, one doesn’t need much equipment. It is hard to beat the flavor of freshly-roasted and ground beans brewed in a coffee press.

When Starbucks opened its first espresso bar at Pike Place Market in Seattle, I had relatives in the area and before long had been treated to the theater of baristas pulling shots and making lattes and cappuccinos. There was a real indulgence in the foamy milk and I developed a taste for it. I begin my day with a latte with a touch of honey or maple syrup most days. But it is an indulgence and even without the sweetener, the milk does mask the flavor of the coffee. When I am in the mood for the flavor of coffee, I’m likely to reach for a pacific coffee such as Kona or Sumatra and a coffee press.

As one might expect from Starbucks, given its Seattle roots, the company has invested a lot in showy technology. The company features Maestro espresso machines in its stores for pulling shots, steaming milk and crafting their signature beverages. In the past few years select stores have installed Clover machines for making a cup of brewed coffee. The Clover is a ridiculously expensive reverse coffee press, using vacuum to pull the grounds up to the top of the coffee and pull the liquid from the bottom. It makes a great cup of coffee in which there is no residue or grounds in the cup after you drink. When I have had the opportunity, I have enjoyed a few cups brewed with the Clover.

On the East Coast there are high-end coffee bars that have taken a different approach. Instead of showy machines, they offer a menu of different ways of brewing coffee for the customer. These coffee bars are not adverse to spending money to attract customers, they just aren’t putting the money in high tech machines. Stumptown Coffee Roasters just completed a $1 million renovation of a Greenwich Village storefront. The shop includes a separate brew bar where customers can order coffee prepared in their choice of brewer including AeroPress, Bee House, Chemex, French press, V60 and siphon. Intelligentsia Coffee is opening a new coffee bar in the D.C. area that will feature a pour-over coffee bar equipped with Japanese Wave drippers and special kettles to boil the water.

You can count on both coasts of the country to produce cups of coffee that retail in the $5 area that would cost pennies to make at home. They are selling culture and ambiance as much as coffee.

They’re also selling coffee snobbery – a quality I find as appealing as wine snobbery.

When we moved to Rapid City in the mid ‘90’s I commented to someone that the best cup of coffee in town came out of my kitchen. It was an arrogant statement and probably false. But there is a grain of truth to that. The best coffee is that which is shared with friends. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money or have a specialty vocabulary. It doesn’t matter how it is made or where the beans were roasted. What matters most is sharing with friends.

I’m not quite ready to join the gang that gathers daily for coffee at McDonalds (where they have a senior discount that saves a dime a cup) quite yet. But I seem to be getting closer every day.

In the meantime, stop by my house or office for a cup of coffee some day. It might not be the fanciest, but the company is good.

Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.