I know it’s expensive.
And, for non coffee-aficionados, the taste difference may not be appreciable.
All I know is that I notice. And I care enough to splurge every few years on Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee.
Blame my Uncle Dean.
You see, Uncle Dean is the type of uncle every little girl should have. No, he wasn’t around much to bounce me on his knee, and I certainly didn’t know him well. But at some ethereal level I always felt I knew him really, really well—who he was, and why he did what he did. He’d probably hate that, because Uncle Dean is one of those people who thrives on doing the unexpected, and on no one really being able to guess or understand what’s coming next. Kinda like me.
When I was a kid, it was Uncle Dean who sent packages to me and my siblings—packages from far-flung places like Korea, with marvelous presents inside like Korean hats that transported us to another land.
There was no event tied to the gifts. I don’t ever remember a Christmas present, and he certainly never learned our various birthdays. These were purely random gifts, made special by knowing, “He thought of us!”
My most recent package from Uncle Dean contained Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. He knew its value—he spent years living in Jamaica. The idea that he would share that with the foodie in the family was possibly half the fun. After all, there is a little romance around unexpected packages and surprising treats.
I savored that coffee and spun its existence out as long a possible. In the interim, I’ve settled for Peet’s and a few other specialty coffees that satisfy both the flavor and the fantasy–to a point. But I recently bought a bag of Jamaican Blue Mountain from Joni’s, a popular Marina del Ray coffee shop. I chose not to resist, simply because it was a chance to capture the flavor again. For me, Jamaican Blue Mountain evokes memories of Korean hats and tantalizes me with doing the unexpected.
Sometimes it’s not the food itself that matters. It’s the flavor it brings to life.
