Destination: The Java Zone

Jan/Feb 2009

Nicaraguan coffee growers are preserving ecosystems that nurture banana trees, sloths, and a new breed of tourists

The mist was clearing, revealing forested hilltops that mark the edge of a protected national forest in Nicaragua’s northern highlands. With a trio of toucans in a tall tree looking down their long, green banana beaks at us, I walked with Flora Montenegro, a coffee farmer, as she inspected her crop. Montenegro is always smiling. Her black hair flows in a bushy ponytail from under her baseball cap. She is descended from the German settlers who first brought coffee to this region, and her blue eyes scanned the scene around us: coffee and more coffee, shade trees protecting it from the sun, and above us the verdant forest. I’ve been drinking coffee for years. I love the way a warming mug of the stuff marks my daily transition to wakefulness. But I knew there was more to my morning jolt than just caffeine. I had come to the mountains of Nicaragua to peer into coffee’s murky depths. (more…)

Posted in Magazines, Sierra

In San Francisco, a Cocktail Is Not Just a Drink

Dec 27, 2008

THE bartender at the Alembic took my order for a mint julep. He unfolded a small canvas sack, which he filled with ice and laid on the bar. He took up a black bat and began whaling on the pouch, reaching above his head to pummel the bag over and over again.

He mounded the resulting gravel-sized ice in a silver cup into which followed 12-year Old Fitzgeraldbourbon and simple syrup. He snapped a generous bunch of dark mint sprigs and planted it in the ice. He concealed a small straw inside the bouquet, such that my first experience of the now-frosted cup was a clean, soaring nose of pure mint. A bracing, richly sweet wash of bourbon followed close behind.

It was the best mint julep I have ever had. By far.

Read it on the NYT Site…

Posted in New York Times, Newspapers

Agony and Ecstasy

Dec 18th 2008

Ecstasy may be good for those who can’t get over something truly horrible

“I’VE been shot in the leg. I’ve been beat up. But that’s pretty minor,” says a 41-year-old American security contractor who spent four years in Iraq. “But when you get a vehicle blown out from under you and ambushed by six or eight al-Qaedas, it does tend to affect one a little bit.” (more…)

Posted in Magazines, The Economist