Here's a coffee table book with an interesting twist: it's a coffee table coffee book. Coffee: A Gourmet's Guide by Mary Banks (Carlton Books, £9.99 in UK) is chock full of facts and it isn't a grind to read. In fact it's quite enjoyable. Banks tells the story of coffee in a thorough but breezy manner, condensing a thousand years into a handful of pages. The plant was first discovered in Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) from AD 575 to AD 1000, though it wasn't cultivated until 1250 to 1450, in Yemen. That fact in itself is rather impressive. I always assumed that the likes of Alexander the Great drank coffee. Most of us can't get it together to pick a tie without a cup of the stuff - imagine conquering the world without it.
Coffee reached Mecca and Cairo by 1511. The first coffee house was established in Venice in 1645, and the first English coffee house was opened in London in 1652.
Instant coffee was invented in Britain in 1906 and to this day accounts for 90 per cent of the coffee consumed in that country - the highest ratio in the world. I'd say those statistics speak volumes about the relative taste of instant coffee. (Gee, I wish I was English. I'd love to start my day with baked beans and instant coffee.)
The current world-wide craze can be traced to the Pacific Northwest of the US. "One of the most surprising aspects of the story of the Seattle-based coffee revival," writes Banks, an American living in Britain, "is the fact that, for once, influence is traveling from West to East."
A good portion of the book is dedicated to coffee production. Although there are over 50 species of the coffee plant in the rubiaceae family, only two provide most of the world's commercial coffee: Coffea arabica, and coffea canephora, better known as robusto. Of these, arabica is the most sought-after. Though the plant is more delicate, it yields a much better, less barbaric taste. Robusto is used primarily in instant coffee.
Another chapter looks at the global picture, detailing what kind of coffee is produced where. The world's most sought-after coffee is Jamaican Blue Mountain, which has always been my favourite as well because it has a straightforward taste and authentic aroma, a kind of Maxwell House with legs. The biggest coffee producer is Brazil, which accounts for nearly 27 per cent of the world crop.
There is a chapter on brewing coffee and another on various styles, with recipes. The former explains everything there is to know about making coffee. The latter chapter is particularly useful to those who are new to cafe society. Yes, you too can order a "grande half decaf latte macchiato skinny," though how you can do so without feeling silly remains a mystery.
Missing from the book is an account of how the Pacific Northwest triggered a world-wide craze. I certainly would have preferred that to a chapter on instant coffee. But of course one must remember that Banks is writing for the English market, and they love their instant coffee. (Gee, I wish I was English. I'd love to have a cup of instant coffee to go with my Spotted Dick.)
I also prefer my reading, like my coffee, to be undiluted and straight, so a couple of charts showing consumption of coffee by country, relative price of coffee, etc, would have been nice. But I'm not bitter. The photos in this book more than make up for that omission.