Coffee in Peru

"Cafe Instantaneo"

For those of you who share my love of coffee, this post will interest you (I hope!). Non-coffee drinkers will be bored out of their un-caffeinated minds. I'm sorry -- a little sorry for the irrelevant post, and a lot sorry that you're missing out on one of life's greatest pleasures.

As you may know, Peru produces some excellent coffee. Unfortunately, they export most of it, and many people here drink instant. That's right. Instant coffee. Ponder the tragedy of that for just a moment.

I had a hard time believing this at first and bought a bag of coffee from the grocery store our first week here. It was horrible. After three mornings of suffering, I threw it in the garbage and made a purchase I'm ashamed to admit.

Starbucks in Arequipa

That's right, Starbucks. But at least it was Peruvian coffee from Starbucks. Okay, okay, I know. That doesn't make it any better. There are two Starbucks in Arequipa, both opened just within the last year or so. Everyone we've talked to was shocked when they popped up. It's one small example of the rapid growth Arequipa is experiencing. When we were here three years ago, there was one mall. Now there are four enormous, beautiful shopping plazas.

Cafe Valenzuela: for export

I simply could not accept the idea that I may spend an entire year living in Peru and have to drink Starbucks coffee. So I was very glad to hear from a friend about a coffee shop downtown where they roast their own beans and sell coffee that is designated for export. This morning was our first taste of Cafe Valenzuela, and it is pretty good.

Now my next challenge is to figure out how to get it ground more coarsely so it will work well with our French press. Before I went to the shop, I looked up in our well-used Spanish dictionary how to ask for coarsely ground coffee for a French press. Then I practiced it a few times. Then I asked one of the Peruvian women who works at the office, and she verified the phrasing was correct. Then I muttered it to myself during the 15-minute walk to the coffee shop. Then I got to the shop and things fell apart. No matter what I said, I could not convince the woman to grind it coarsely. We had several exchanges back and forth, and I turned down two sample scoops of finely ground coffee. She finally compromised and nudged the dial on the grinder a centimeter or so. But it is still too fine for the French press.

As happens regularly in our life nowadays, I have no idea what happened there. Sigh.

I'm loving our French press. It's also making me drink less coffee since
it is very small and doesn't stay hot long. Probably a good thing...

Another newly opened store in Arequipa is an itsy-bitsy organic shop that I visited the other day and discovered a couple things I've been hunting for: flax seeds and whole oats. I heard later that the store also carries a type of organic coffee that recently won some sort of award at a global coffee competition. Hmmm... I don't think I'll wait until our bag of Cafe Valenzuela is gone before I'll be checking that out.

The good news for my fellow coffee-lovers is that I'll have all this figured out by the time you come visit, so I'll be prepared to serve you the very best Peru has to offer.