Thursday, March 18, 2021

Coffee, Globalization and and Why We Care About A Hill of Beans

While the world has changed in so many ways lately and turned most of our routines upside down, the one constant I suspect for many is their ritualistic morning coffee. For the moment it may not be in your favorite coffee shop, but nonetheless, the magic elixir helps start each day and power it along with consistency as the uncertain future unfolds.


But how did Coffee of all things become not just our universal drug of choice, but an essential lubricant in connecting us to each other and to the world?


It’s a story that begins in the volcanic highland of El Salvador and is often as complex as the taste of your hand-selected organically grown coffee beans. This is the story that Augustine Sedgewick tells in Coffeeland: One Man's Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug.


My conversation with Augustine Sedgewick: