Note: This post marks the launch of Mad Flavor, in which the author describes his occasional forays from the farm in search of exceptional culinary experiences from small artisanal producers.
Three Cups in Chapel Hill, N.C., offers what might be the nation's finest non-espresso coffee experience.
I can't say so definitively. Nearly every U.S. city now has at least one café lorded over by a coffee-obsessed madperson; I've by no means sampled them all, though I'd love to try. Every time I go to a new town, though, I seek out the best coffee, and I've found nothing that matches Three Cups.
The café's name refers to coffee, tea, and wine. I've never had tea there; the list seems to focus on hyper-specific varietals and regions.
As for wine, the places sells it retail and (I think) by the glass. The selection focuses on small, out-of-the-way producers using old techniques and often organic/biodynamic growing practices -- the sort of winemakers celebrated in the 2004 documentary Mondovino, which is absolutely a must-see for anyone who loves wine. The bottles sold by Three Cups tend to be under $20, and every one I've bought has been wonderful.
What sets the place apart, though, is the coffee.
Counter Culture, a celebrated coffee roaster in nearby Durham, custom-roasts the seven or eight single-origin coffee varieties Three Cups offers. Counter Culture is one of those roasters that prides itself on chasing down beans from specific lots and specific farms. And it's a pioneer in sustainability and social justice issues -- both highly vexed issues within the coffee trade.
Three Cups takes these superlative beans, which it will use only within a week of roasting, and works magic.
To ensure that every cup is fresh-brewed, Three Cups favors the the French press. So you choose a varietal, and the server grinds a precisely weighed amount of beans, adds them to the press with water calibrated at just some exact temperature, and then immediately flips over a three-minute hourglass timer. The server also rinses your cup with hot water.
And that's not all. Three Cups gets all of its milk products from Maple View Dairy just outside of Chapel Hill -- the best and richest commercially available milk around. To make half-and-half, Three Cups itself mixes Maple View milk and heavy cream.
The attention to detail pays off. Yesterday, I ordered a presspot with Ethiopian Yergecheffe, complete with some specific lot number and God knows what other details. When three minutes were up, I pressed and poured, and goosed it with a little half-and-half.
That coffee had a story to tell me. It was whispering all these delicate little taste sensations, luxuriously nestled in that sweet, rich half-and-half. The flavor lingered like that of a good wine, with all of these chocolatey soft coffee notes going on and on.
It was a great story, and I wish I could listen again right now. But now, I'm back in the mountains, back on the farm, and far away from Three Cups.
No coffee fanatic should pass within 50 miles of Chapel Hill and not seek out Three Cups. Note well, though: this church of coffee is unaccountably closed on Sundays -- a day I find it particularly important to worship at the altar of God Coffee.
Comments
View as Flat
Chris Schults Posted 8:39 am
06 Oct 2006
Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil.
But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields.
Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.
Against the backdrop of Tadesse's journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world's coffee trade becomes apparent. New York commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges, and the double dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation reveal the many challenges Tadesse faces in his quest for a long term solution for his farmers.
Look out! It's a media shower!
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Gregory Dicum Posted 10:23 am
06 Oct 2006
This spring, the Specialty Coffee Association's annual conference was in Charlotte, so I got to check it out for myself. (what, you ask, was I doing at the conference? Plugging my book, The Coffee Book, of course -- and thanks for asking!)
There's a great scene there of small local roasters supplying their communities with really tasty, really conscious, largely Fair Trade and organic beans.
Besides Three Cups, check out Larry's Beans, Counter Culture, and Cafe Campesino, which is part of the same scene but in Georgia.
These guys really mean it--they're like small, sustainable aid organizations really raising awareness (and alertness) in their local communities and changing lives in coffee-producing regions, all without the fuss that gets attached to everything in more manic media markets.
All About Me.
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mihan Posted 1:07 am
08 Oct 2006
I really appreciate your and Roz's posts on food and food politics. I have an idea, though: would it be possible to make up a index of food experiences discussed in Grist? Just name of business, city and state, and a one-sentence description. Traveling Gristas could go to this page, search for "Wisconsin", and see what other Gristas have recommended doing there. Or, you could search for "coffee" and find all that has been written in these "pages" about coffee.
Ditto recipes!
Is this possible? I would love it, since whenever I travel I obsessively seek out good local food experiences.
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healrth Posted 3:29 am
09 Oct 2006
(hmm, maybe not....how's about putting out a call to readers to see if someone would feel like taking it on as a Community Service project??)
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Tom Philpott Posted 8:29 am
09 Oct 2006
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greenmountainman Posted 9:38 am
09 Oct 2006
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spaceshaper Posted 11:33 am
06 Aug 2007
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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