Read Various Flavors of Coffee for Free Online Page B

observe,” he said thoughtfully, “that the smell differs here in the cup and”—he moved his nose a little further away—“from a distance of a few inches. Moreover, tilting the nose to one side —thus— appears to intensify the aro-mas.While rotating the liquid with a gentle motion”—he swirled the cup—“release a different set of volatiles.These will all be matters for us to consider in due course.”
    “Mr.Wallis was just expressing his reservations in the matter of blending,” Jenks piped up caustically.
    Pinker looked at me with a frown.“Is that so?”
    “I was just observing,” I said mildly—damn that sneak Jenks!— “what a trouble it must be, to buy coffee in so many varieties, yet to sell so few.”
    “True, true. The aficionado will find something to admire about the coffee from any estate, just as a lover of wine will delight in comparing the clarets of Bordeaux with the Riojas of Spain and so on. But we must make a profit, and unlike wines, coffee once roasted does not improve with age.”
    He went to the window that overlooked his warehouse, and for a moment he looked down at that great space, brooding.“Think of them as an army,” he said, almost to himself—I was compelled to stand at his shoulder to hear him. “Each regiment has its place of origin, its character, yet each regiment is composed of individuals—fighting men who have given up their own identity to the whole. Out there I have my Highlanders, my Irish Irregulars, my Gurkhas. And just as an army deploys its cavalry or its engineers, depending on the task, so the blender might balance a dull Brazilian with a small amount of Sumatra, or mask the deficiencies of one lot with the best attributes of another.”
    “Then, if they are an army, you must be their general, ready to send them into war,” I said. I was joking, but Pinker’s expression as he glanced at me then betrayed not a whit of humor: rather, his eyes were fierce with the thought of what his battalions might achieve.
    “Exactly so,” he said softly.“Exactly so.”

    We began work immediately. A burner was brought in and connected to the gas. We were supplied with a copious quantity of
    cups and kettles of water, as well as a rough fellow called South whose job was to fetch samples of coffee as we required them. There were also two steel buckets, the purpose of which I was initially unclear about.
    “For the coffee,” Pinker explained. “If you actually drink it all, you’ll jump out of your skin.”
    We were also supplied with Emily, who took up her position at the side of the table with her notepad. I smiled at her, but although she nodded back it was a professional greeting, nothing more. Of course she was not to know that the previous evening we had copulated at some length on a velvet-covered divan at Number 18 Wellington Street. (The girl I had chosen was pretty enough, but lethargic, her natural lubriciousness clearly augmented by a generous dollop of Clayton’s Grease. Much later, after I had returned to my own rooms, I found my detumescent member to be thickly coated with the stuff. It is a curious thing with whores that one pays a premium for inexperience and lack of ability—surely the only profession in which this is the case. But I digress.)
    “I suggest we take as our starting point the remarks Linnaeus makes on the various categories of odor,” Pinker said. He consulted a pocket-book. “Here we are. Linnaeus groups scents into seven classes, depending on their hedonic, that is to say pleasant, properties.Thus we have Fragrantes, the fragrant smells, such as saffron or wild lime; Aramaticos, aromatics, such as citron, anise, cinnamon and clove; Ambrosiacos, ambrosial or musky smells; Alliaceous, the smells of garlic or onion bulbs; Hircinos, goatish smells, such as cheese, meat or urine; Tetros, foul smells, such as dung or walnuts; and Nauseosos, nauseating smells, such as the gum of the asafoetida plant. Are you in agreement?”
    I