Thursday, January 06, 2011

hands

Drink From My Cup
Over at Food GPS, Josh Lurie interviewed a guy named Jay Murdoch, a very serious coffee guy currently shepherding all coffee activity at Kaffe 1668 in New York's TriBeCa district.  I don't know of the guy, nor the place (though if the awesome website is any indication, I really should), but when Josh asked him what inspires him about coffee, he had this beautiful piece to say:

"Hands.  Hands.  Coffee is all about hands to me.  It starts from picking the coffee cherry, and then that cherry has got to be removed.  The coffee’s got to be processed, sorted, graded, re-graded, cupped, re-sorted, dried and then it gets bagged.  Shipped.  Then it goes into the roasters’ hands.  They have to put their hands on it and control.   Finally, it will typically be hands of packagers, though that’s becoming a little more automated these days.  Then it comes into our hands.  We can only see a degradation along the line.  Coffee’s never better than when you pick the cherry off the tree.  The more that those hands care about what they’re doing, the better coffee will be.  That’s what’s it’s about to me." 

I love this.

Here's the full interview.

--
thanks to Ian Sane for the photo

4 comments:

  1. Tannaz,

    Thanks for building a post around Jay's quote. I can see why you did. He had a lot of thoughtful responses that related to the coffee industry, but could easily apply beyond.

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  2. Josh, it was my pleasure! clearly he is very passionate about what he does and it's so interesting to see that that passion is driven by such an earthy sentiment (and one so beautifully stated). great interview!

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  3. Greetings Tannaz,

    Great article! Thank you for including my picture, too. I'm honored!

    Ian Sane

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  4. thanks ian, it's a gorgeous photo, and eerily fitting =)

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