Rick Smith/Columnist
Many Louisianans swear up and down that the coffee served at the Café du Monde in New Orleans – a blend of coffee and chicory – is the favored drink of Creole State coffee aficionados. Chicory, the root of the endive plant, is added to soften the bitter edge of the dark roasted coffee because coffee can be bitter or sweet depending on its temperature, much the same as extended family members.
Coffee, like art, has the ability to arouse emotions and create sensory experiences.
The gaze of the Mona Lisa is titillating, yet shyly flirtatious. Could it be that Da Vinci skillfully captured her expression as she reflected on the barista at the local java joint totally misspelling her name on her cappuccino cup?
Or could the godforsaken facial features of the farmer standing beside his daughter in Grant Wood’s American Gothic have to do with having to skip morning coffee so that the right angle of sunlight could be captured for the painting?
Coffee has been an important splinter in American history. The first mention of coffee in America was by Captain John Smith, explorer and cartographer of New England. He was forced to return to England following injury from an accidental explosion of gunpowder in a canoe.
Could it be that gunpowder, a burning amber, and caffeine jitters were never meant to occupy space in the same pirogue?
A tea boycott gave rise to the Boston Tea Party. Faster than a freedom fighter could say, “A double shot of ristretto accompanied by a three-quarter flat white,” drinking coffee replaced tea as a form of protest. And if that wasn’t enough, coffee quickly swapped places with beer as the most popular beverage of choice in the morning.
Coffee selling in colonial America required a license, much like today’s alcohol regulations. In 1670, Dorothy Jones became the first licensed coffee trader in the colonies, gaining official permission to “keepe a house of publique Entertainment for the selling of Coffee & Chochaletto.”
If history has taught us anything, it has shown us that coffee and conversation are the unrivaled tag-team and that an awful lot can come to light over a cup of coffee. Colonial coffee houses served as important hubs of political exchange. For example, the Green Dragon, a Boston coffeehouse and tavern, built in 1701, was known as the “Headquarters of the Revolution” because of the meetings that occurred in an underground chamber. It was at this establishment that plans for the invasion of Lexington and Concord were overheard thus fostering the famous midnight ride of Paul Revere.
Coffee, one of the great loves of people around the world, is the textbook-perfect drink for America’s on-the-go, work-obsessed culture. In fact, there are over 125 million coffee drinkers in the United States, drinking over 188,705 million cups annually, making America the largest consumer of coffee in the world.
For those of us that love our coffee, we lift our mugs this Sunday, Nation Coffee Day, and say, “A morning without coffee is like… just kidding. We have no idea.”
Rick Smith is a Jeffersonian and can be reached at theriquemeister@gmail.com.