Coffee has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Morning espresso with my great grandmother in Queens, NY is my earliest, most vivid and undoubtedly my fondest memory of coffee and what it means to me. Going into my 6th year of making coffee "professionally" and innumerable coffee pots at family tables later, I figured it was time to share my passion and knowledge of coffee with a wider audience. Coffee for me has always been about community and bringing people together.
Coffee is so much more than a drink in a cup. Every cup of coffee has a journey, from plant to roaster, from bag to cup. Every cup of coffee has a story, where you drank it, who you drank it with, why you drank it. For these (and so many more) reasons, coffee is integral to our culture; cultivating it, driving it, bringing us together in ways that only it can do.
Coffee's history is rich: intertwined with arts and politics, impacting the everyday and the sublime arc of historical narratives. It is still doing this today, and will continue to be present in our lives in already seen and new ways.
The comfort that coffee brings us allows us to come together with it in order to confront things that make us uncomfortable. Coffee is ephemeral, an experience, although repeatable, that is fleeting by nature. It is succinctly impactful. My only request of you, is to come together with me around coffee, for coffee, and the rest will fall into place.
~T
Juana "Maringua" Tineo, my great grandmother, my first barista (aka, "The Beginning")
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