At the beginning of the twentieth century Venezuela, the country where I was born, was among the five largest exporters of coffee in the world. With the passing of time the activity was declining to the point that in recent years we have come to import it from neighboring countries. However, not even in the worst moments of the turbulent economic life of our country has the population lost its taste for coffee.
My mother has always been a great coffee drinker and she taught us to drink it since we were children. Every day in my family began with a cup of black coffee.
In the years of my childhood commercial brands were not common; my mother would go to the market where there were many stalls that ground the beans. There they offered coffee from different regions of the country and the most requested were from Táchira, Lara and Miranda. My mother always bought a small amount, among other things so that it would not lose its scent. That freshly ground coffee was packed in an artisanal way, it was not vacuum packed, so if it was left too long in the paper bag it lost much of its original scent.
On one occasion I went with my father on vacation to a coffee plantation in the State of Táchira, owned by one of his brothers. There I learned about the whole process of coffee processing, the harvesting of the beans, the selection, drying and grinding. That experience remained deeply engraved in my memory.
Every afternoon of those unforgettable vacations. My uncle and my father would send a small amount of beans to be ground, just enough to prepare four or five cups. After more than fifty years I still keep in my memory the quality of that coffee, its smell was intense and pleasant and its flavor exquisite, it left a bitter taste in my mouth for a long time. I have never tasted anything similar again, with any of the different varieties of my country and not even with some Colombian and Brazilian coffees that have arrived to our markets.
My mother at eighty-six years of age continues to be a great coffee lover and in the city where she lives, Barquisimeto, in the State of Lara, there are still small factories that process the coffee produced in the area. Near her house they pack a coffee of excellent quality, it is called Cordillera.
Every year my mother comes to my city, Maracay, once or twice. She always brings us as gifts a few kilos of this coffee. Although it is of excellent quality, it cannot be compared to the one I remember from my childhood in that Andean hacienda. Jokingly I tell her that the coffee from Táchira is better and she answers me laughing that the Cordillera is the best coffee in the world... There is nothing written about tastes...
Thank you for your time.
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