I have never tasted Vietnamese coffee before, but there is some included in our cupping at Maximus Coffee. On the round table in front of us, there are seven coffee samples. We sit on wheeled stools so we can rotate around the table.
At each station, a little paper boat is filled with green coffee beans and another is filled with the same beans after roasting. Then there are three handle-less cups filled with freshly ground coffee from different parts of the shipment. First we examine the green coffee beans, then we sniff the roasted grounds, then we sniff the roasted grounds with hot water added. Finally, we slurp the coffee.
Two samples of Mexican beans both remind me of Community Coffee — I am guessing Community Coffee uses a lot of Mexican beans. There's also an example of very old beans and another of beans that have been improperly dried; they'll probably be used for instant coffee.
The best blended sample I try is actually McDonald's coffee; it's 100 percent arabica, but where the beans come from is a trade secret. I like the flavor of the tiny Brazilian beans we sample, but de Aldecoa points out that while they have excellent fruit sugars, they're naturally dried and lack the proper acid level. They are very nice beans, but they would taste much better blended with brighter, more acidic, fermented and washed arabica beans from Colombia, like the first coffee we sampled, he says. That's when I know I'm way out of my league.
When I get to the coffee from Vietnam, de Aldecoa giggles as I slurp up a mouthful and wince. "It tastes like dirt," I say in shock. "Or mud."
This is not only the first time I have ever tasted Vietnamese coffee — it's the first time I have tasted a cup of 100 percent robusta coffee. I may not like it, but it's enormously important to commercial coffee roasters.
Vietnam is the second-largest coffee-producing nation in the world, and while its coffee doesn't land at the Port of Houston, it eventually arrives here anyway. It is unloaded in Southern California ports and shipped to Houston by rail for roasting.
I ask de Aldecoa if Houston will eventually become the top coffee port in America. The coffee that is unloaded at the Port of Houston doesn't tell the whole story of Houston and coffee, he says. You also have to include the Vietnamese coffee that arrives here by rail.
"Measured by total tonnage, Houston is probably already the nation's top coffee city."
