Coffee drinkers searching for perfection seek organic solutions.
By Roger Haden

BLACK gold is a term given to crude oil and coffee – both highly valuable natural products with proven bankability. Perhaps another connection exists: oil (and its by-products) powers the wheels of industry and transportation, while coffee certainly “oils the wheels” of communication. A clear relation between coffee-drinking, chit-chat and a nascent newspaper journalism was firmly established in the famous coffee houses of 18th-century London.

In his book, Tastes of Paradise, Wolfgang Schivelbusch suggested that coffee was indeed the quintessential “capitalist” food, one which “spread through the body and achieved chemically and pharmacologically what rationalism and the Protestant ethic sought to fulfil spiritually and ideologically”.

Ever since coffee (a native of Arabia, hence the Latin name Caffea arabica) was first introduced into fashionable Europe in the 17th century, it has become ever more popular: as early-morning “fix,” mid-morning pick-me-up, the pretence for a meeting (remember the Sienfeld adage: “meeting for coffee” is never just “meeting for coffee”!), an afternoon respite for office-workers, or as post-prandial evening digestif. Coffee is a means of letting us be who we are. Whether café-sitter or counterside quaffer, the poses adopted, the styles preferred, as well as the types of coffee imbibed, each provide “a concave mirror in which a minute image of the city is reflected,” as German philosopher Walter Benjamin remarked on café life in Paris. Adaptable and versatile, “coffee” has blossomed into a wondrous expression of human eccentricity.

What of the stuff itself? No health warnings here, save the one about moderation. But, being the preferred beverage the world over, coffee is cultivated intensively, which also amounts to its being the most heavily sprayed crop on the planet: pesticides, fungicides, herbicides. Those coffee ”jitters” are worth considering seriously. Politically-speaking, the world’s overproduction of coffee also creates gross injustices for those employed to do the cultivation, spraying, cropping, sorting, bagging and shipping. Enter Fair Trade: an organisation (with many global affiliations) which aims to protect the rights of coffee plantation workers to reap the rewards of their own labour. Fair Trade coffee is also often organically grown, which means that when it reaches your cup it is free from residual chemical contamination. And you will taste the difference.

Look on the packet for the endorsements of Fair Trade, and of the governing biodynamic or organic bodies in the country of origin (these can differ). Expect to pay two to three dollars more per 250g for “the real thing”. In buying coffee from East Timor, Sumatra, Mexico, Costa Rica, or Ethiopia, you are really doing something for indigenous peoples “on the ground”.

Adelaide Fair Trade, at 419 Portrush Rd (north of Burnside Village), has an excellent range of both organic and Fair Trade coffees (and teas). The organic special roast from smallholder coffee plantations in East Timor ($8.40 for 250g) is superb.

At the Coffee Bean in Adelaide Central Market try their Mexican or Javanese organic ($7-$7.50 for 200g). David Jones and Bottega Rotolo (7 Osmond Tce, Norwood) also sell Grinders’ new organic blend, and Rio Coffee in Norwood roast and sell organic coffee.