9 July 2018
When the Boston Globe’s Matt Viser interviewed me in 2015, I said if I could have an office in a Boston café, I would choose Barrington Coffee Roasting Company.
Barth Anderson roasting his “Commonwealth” blend.
From a certain slant of light, that wish has come true this summer since, after returning from Stockholm to Boston, I’m spending more time than ever in roasteries and cafes.
Among my happiest reconnections—after this past year in Halifax—has been with Barth Anderson at his roastery in Lee, Massachusetts (where he taught me years ago that coffee sings) and with members of my coffee family at his Newbury café, including the brilliant Meister, author of New York City Coffee: A Caffeinated History.
Such reunions oscillate between the hours I’m spending writing while enjoying exquisite coffee and tea, especially the Nitro Cold Brew, which uses Barrington’s “Commonwealth” blend.
I’ve been pondering wealth a lot these days—and how it’s not common at all—as I’m crafting my PhD proposal on the role of the state, climate resilience, and gender equity in the coffeelands.
The historic terminology of the ‘Commonwealth’ has various political uses. Founding fathers such as John Adams used the phrase to evoke democracy and diversity when framing the Massachusetts state constitution. Since the 20th century, it pertains to an association of sovereign states that became an outgrowth of the British Empire. As it conquered lands and acquired nations, it forced many people to give up their land’s use of subsistence agriculture for export “cash crops” such as coffee or cacao.
As I’m spending hours writing in beautiful cafes in the ‘Commonwealth of Massachusetts,’ I consider the hands that made this exquisite cup of coffee possible. Because of Boston’s sweltering heat waves, I’m particularly mindful of how my cup of coffee gets to me.
I will never meet most of the 25 million coffee farmers who toil to plant coffee seedlings and pick coffee cherries that will later be harvested and produced into “coffee beans”—but I know most of them do not experience the luxury of drinking the fruit of their labour in air-conditioned cafés.
In specialty coffee, such questions of equity, poverty, and sustainability pervade our conversations: we want a future with coffee, and we imagine a world where wealth might indeed be ‘common.’
To that end, this summer, “A World in Your Cup” will feature visionary people and businesses visited on travels from Sweden, the United States, and Canada. Dozens of coffee roasteries or cafes, and cacao factories or shops, are working to make a more just and equitable world possible.
Please join us on social media @aworldinyourcup!