Various Flavors of Coffee by Anthony Capella Read Free Book Online

gave it a moment’s thought.“No.” Pinker frowned.
    “Linnaeus’s system may have suited his own purposes,” I said
    airily, “but aesthetic principles dictate a different approach. We must deal first with sight—with color and appearance—and only then proceed to smell, taste, aftertaste and so on.”
    Pinker considered.“Very well.”
    Having thus established that we were doing this my way, I sent South off to get a handful of coffee from every sack in the warehouse. Eventually the beans were arranged in little heaps on the table before me.
    “So,” I said, more confidently than I felt, “these ones over here are as black as despair, whereas these are as golden as virtue—”
    “No, no, no,” Pinker interjected. “This is far too poetical. One man’s despair is another man’s gloom, and who is to say whether gloom and despair are the same color?”
    I saw his point.“Then we will have to decide on words for several different shades of black.”
    “Exactly, sir—that is my purpose entirely.”
    “Hmm.” I considered. It was, when one thought about it, a rather vexing issue.“We shall begin,” I declared,“by fixing the very blackest form of black there is.”
    “Very well.”
    A silence fell upon us. It was, in fact, quite hard to think of a word to describe the pure blackness of the darkest beans. “The pure black of a cow’s nose,” I said at last. Pinker made a face. “Or the glistening black of a slug at dawn—”
    “Too fanciful. And, if I may say so, hardly appetizing.” “The black of a Bible.”
    “Too objectionable.”
    “The black of a moonless night.” Pinker tutted.
    “Too poetic for you? What about charcoal, then?”
    “But charcoal is not quite black. It is a kind of gray, somewhere between the gray of Cornish slate and the gray of a mouse’s fur.” This was from Emily. I glanced at her. “My apologies,” she added.
    “You probably don’t require another person’s opinion, when your own is already so pronounced.”
    “No—you make a good objection,” I said. “And besides, the more . . . collaborative we are, the better our chances of eventual success.” Inwardly, of course, I was deeply regretting not having stipulated that this Guide should be something I produce entirely on my own.We had been debating the color black for ten minutes, and I had not even made back the ten shillings I had spent so en-ergetically the night before.
    “Sable?” I suggested. “Crow,” Pinker countered. “Anthracite.”
    “Tar.”
    “Jet,” I said.
    Pinker nodded reluctantly. No one could argue that jet was in-deed very black.
    “We have our first word,” Emily said, writing it down.“But you should perhaps bear in mind that these beans are only black because we have roasted them to be that way. In their natural state they are actually light brown.”
    “Yes, of course,” I said. “I was aware of that.” And, needless to say, I had forgotten.“The roast is, naturally, something else we must consider. In the meantime we ask ourselves—if those are jet, then what are these?”With my finger I pushed at some more beans.
    “Those are . . . iron,” Emily said.
    “Indeed,” I agreed.“Iron they certainly are.”
    “This is getting easier,” she commented as she wrote it down. “And these?” Pinker said, pointing at a third pile.
    “Those are pearl.”
    “Pearls are white.Any fool knows that.”
    I picked up one of the beans and scrutinized it closely. It had a sort of opalescent sheen, like a polished coin.“Pewter, then.”
    “I agree,” Emily said, writing it down.
    “And so we come to brown.”
    “But there are many different shades of brown, and all of them are simply called brown,” Pinker objected.“There are no words to distinguish between them.”
    “Not so. Consider, for example, the brown of different kinds of wood.” I glanced at the beans.“Some of these might be called mahogany, some ash, some oak.”
    Abruptly, Pinker stood. “I have