Coffee is Worth a Thousand Words

The leadership, o Consorcio, of the city of Santiago de Compostela, had the grand idea of organizing a coffee competition. After all, theirs was a city of a hundred thousand residents and nearly as many students. Everybody went to a café daily, sometimes more than once. The leaders also thought in terms of tourism, even though the City of the Apostle had more than enough of them. Add to this the fact that the residents didn’t mind the entertainment such a competition would provide. They were willing to pretend for that week that they lived in Santiago de Café. Kind of catchy!

The Consorcio people thought they could do like the americanos did at the end of summer: turn everything into pumpkins, like was supposed to happen to Cinderella if she stayed out past her curfew. (Her coach turned into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight, according to the rules set by her Fairy Godmother. Surely everybody recalls that.) Americans wanted pumpkin and the spices that went with it in everything for a few weeks every year. It was kind of funny to see where pumpkin turned up on store shelves.

Now Santiago could do the pumpkin thing better, of course. Santiago would have a contest to see who really could bring the season to its peak. Who could serve the best seasonal beverage, and in particular, the best coffee? The coffee shops (and bars, if they wanted, because bars serve a lot of coffee, too) would be invited to compete to see who prepared the best autumnal flavors. 

In the competition, there would be rules to follow. Some of the features to be taken into account included: quality of ingredients; quantity and balance of ingredients; originality; miscellaneous features TBD. This meant the participants needed to document every step in the preparation. Judges and future consumers needed to know what was in the beverage. This is would protect the competitors, because their formulas would be seen as patents for their entries. It might sound complicated, but it wasn’t really.

The judges carefully explained that the competition would consist of three parts or phases. Nobody knew what the grand prize was, but it was guaranteed to be perfect for the winner. That was a secret agreed upon by the Consorcio as a way of creating suspense, and thus high public interest in their publicity plan.

Citywide around fifty or so shops registered to participate. Many good cafés decided against it because they weren’t into those funny milks they sell nowadays, milks made from plants and who knows what-all. They were good coffee shops, but they were not adventurous. Autumnal drinks are not to everyone’s liking, and some consider them to be an American gimmick. They might be right, but only partially.

One of the fifty or so competitors was Recuncho, a very small coffee shop, very aptly named because in Galician that meant ‘safe little corner’, more or less. Recuncho was tiny: it had room for a maximum half dozen customers at the same time.

There literally was room along each facing wall for three people. Seven might fit, if that customer agreed to be sandwiched between the people along each wall. After that, any custumers would have to holler their order in from the sidewalk.

Set in a perfect part of the city, on a perfect part of a perfect medieval street, Recuncho could do nothing about its miniscule size, and didn’t seem to care. It never advertised itself as such, but it was the perfect opposite of Starbuck’s or whatever big chain in your area. Enough said. With ‘perfect’ you should be able to picture the place. 

Round One: SPICES

The judges provided a list of possible spices a couple of days before the initial presentation by each participant. This was not meant to limit other choices and included: nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, clove. One or two participants requested to add turmeric because of its nice fall color. Other requests were for chocolate, apple, pecan, and walnut, plus one for coconut. After some debate, these options were accepted.

The judges also reminded the participants that their coffee creations could be combined with different liquids, including water, milk, dairy or non-dairy, and any other that might be deemed appropriate for the caffeinated beverage. 

The spices and liquids used for the autumnal drinks could be combined with a variety of sweeteners, from the carcinogenic processed white stuff to the poisonous aspartame to honey, agave syrup, or coconut sugar. Almost any sweetener was allowed.

Harmful ingredients weren’t recommended, however, because the exact content of each coffee had to be posted for all to see. That meant that by fiat pretty much the artificial sweeteners would be looked down on, as would anything overly processed. The degree of sweetening selected by the entrants was up to them. Just as Brazilian and Turkish coffee are usually sweeter than in a lot of other countries, so the coffee in Santiago de Café could have a range of dulcification.

This first part was very easy, and anyone who produced coffee with some flavor or other was qualified for the second stage. It was therefore no challenge at all for Recuncho, and the little café actually scored well within the top ten of the field. Let’s face it, mixing up pie spices, clove, cinnamon, and the like is not rocket science. It does take a bit more expertise to score in the top 20%, nevertheless.

Round Two: DARING

Some of the participants dropped out after the first round and others didn’t qualify, so instead of the approximately fifty who started out, there were under forty, maybe just thirty-five, remaining for the next round. Here the creativity included flavors like: quadruple chocolate, chestnut, octopus (polbo á feira, a popular Galician dish), millo (corn), grelos (rapini), estruga (stinging nettle). Clearly the participants had been inspired by the spice variety of the first part and were turning to other staples in the local diet. Yes, of course! Why not? Coffee with flavors like lacón (boiled ham), pataca (potato), queixo de Arzúa (Arzúa style cheese). What a great idea for increasing tourism!

This time, just before the last round, many participants had to drop out, because their ideas were exhausted. No, that wasn’t right: they had exhausted all their ideas. Some in the group had bad creative ideas: root beer, beer, mango, things like that. They were creative in concept maybe, but were disastrous or tragic as coffee flavors. The ones who tried to use blueberries might have thought they were imitating one of the odd coffee flavors they have in the US. The problem is, blueberry coffee tastes lousy no matter who makes it.

However, Recuncho did surprisingly well once again. It had created a coffee with the flavor of the fruit, but instead of blueberry or cranberry, it used fruit from from fig trees and a banana plant, both of which were located in Brión. The idea of fruit flavoring for coffee wasn’t so daring, as has been noted. There were at least five or so entries with this ingredient - nísperos, lichis, kiwis all could be grown in Galicia so had been selected for their accessibility. 

What stood out for Recuncho was its ability to locate just that specific combination using two types of fruit from a villa located maybe twenty-five kilometers from Santiago. The result when drinking the ‘Brión Brew’ was a sense of being there. Something strange was in that coffee and the judges could tell. Flavors were not supposed to act like that and fruits don’t really pair that well with the natural intensity of the drink made from roasted coffee beans.

That awareness on the part of the judges should have given the next part away, should have discouraged all the others from continuing. Recuncho was doing something none of the other competitors knew how to do. What that was would remain a secret for the meantime. The judges had to focus on the actual coffees being served, not on any theories that this special competitor was doing something not sanctioned by the rules the Consorcio had written.

Round Three: GRAND FINALE

There were only five participants left. The very small number was to be expected. Most knew they had no chance. The first four were clearly out of their league. They had survived the ‘Daring’ level, the second rung, but now they stumbled badly. Stumbling is not advisable when one is carrying a cup of coffee. There are a lot of broken pieces to pick up when that happens. Just a figure of speech, of course.

After the other four finalists had served their entries, it was time for Recuncho’s coffee creation. In an act that was contrary to the rules of the competition, Recuncho had not included a list of ingredients in its entry. That could have meant disqualification, but nobody wanted to disqualify poor little Recuncho, who was not so ‘poor little’ after all but rather very good at what it did. 

Now there was an air of anticipation: people were beginning to sense something really interesting was coming, something a level above the Brión coffee. The public hadn’t tasted the coffees, but there was no mistaking the look on the face of each judge before the scoring was noted down and then announced. One participant had caused the same reaction in all five.

Recuncho set out five very small cups to the five judges, five each or twenty five in all. The judges were instructed to write down on a small sheet of paper numbered one to five what flavor the coffee had. They would do this five times. Each round, and we must insist that there were five, made the judges shake their heads, look puzzled, or even burst out laughing. They made these gestures first while sipping the coffee, then while writing down what flavor they had identified.

After the five rounds, the lists of the five judges were collected and posted as well as read out loud. These are the flavors that the judges had recorded: 

Moss

Orballo (Misty Rain)

Luscofusco (Dusk) 

Conxuro (Pagan Spellcasting)

Book (Códex Calixtinus, Sempre en Galiza, Curros, etc.)

Castro (Celtic Round House

Mámoa (Prehistoric Stone Monument)

Hórreo (Grain Bin)

Each judge had tasted five of the eight flavors, in the interest of clarity. The thing to keep in mind is the exact repetition of the ‘flavors’ even though none of the tasters had been provided with a list of what to expect.

As one final test, each judge received a very hot cup of the last coffee. All five wrote down what they thought the flavor was. Five times the person in charge of serving read off the word: Catedral Cathedral). That brought the deafening applause of many, while others started to imagine even better flavors. We won’t go into those here.

As the identifications were being read out loud, some mouths had dropped open. Others had begun to water. There was a slight concern that the audience would swarm the judges, demanding to try some of what Recuncho had prepared. What was clear was that despite the odd flavors, which were obviously elements, icons, of Galician culture, people were willing to start getting the hang of drinking those unique coffees. After all, these were flavors with no taste. Instead, they were seen or heard. Some could be touched. That was incredible. The demands got louder and louder.

Recuncho had created café con sinestesia, coffee with synesthesia. For the rest of us, that sense-twisting coffee, so that what is usually savored within the mouth jumps into the realm of landscape or words, what is visual or audible. The research on synesthesia is still in progress, so there can be no explanation of how this was achieved by Recuncho, but it was. It was.

Recuncho obviously has won the competition. Little Recuncho. Now for the grand prize, which was advertised as being perfect for the winner. This promise was announced before the competition began, but it was as if it had been inexplicably known which of the fifty coffee shops and bars would ultimately win.

The Grand Prize in Recuncho’s case has consisted of paying the renovation costs involved in expanding the tiny café to the two small small shops on either side of it. This would mean that Recuncho might grow to a capacity of twenty, but to be fair it would be more like fifteen customers at a time. Yes, fifteen is actually more feasible, if nobody tried to enter with an umbrella. Those little shops on San Pedro are minute, remember. They have been around for centuries, however, and are not likely to be torn down, ever.

The Organizers had been right: the grand prize is perfect! Now Recuncho can really show up the Starbucks of the world, if it wants to. We’re probably safe thinking it doesn’t want to. You can’t make coffee that carries the scent of a salt breeze or the weight of a petroglyph if you’re thinking in terms of coffee, the beverage. You can’t inject a cup of steaming milk with chemicals that will intoxicate the drinker and make him or her think it tastes like a cathedral. That never works, and it never has a formula.

However - and there is nothing arrogant in this statement, I promise - I’m quite certain I have some insight into the process Recuncho uses to get its taste results. I’d be willing to take you there to try some of the things on their coffee menu, and maybe I can help you choose one you really like. We can go slowly. I haven’t gotten to where I am overnight, but I do know one thing:

You can’t come with a Starbucks mind. All you’ll taste if you do is dishwater.