perfidy

Before me on the marble slab that keeps our remote controls and magazines off the floor is a mug of liquid. Darkly roiling currents well up from deep within, disturbing the tranquility of a surface lightly stippled with irridescing dots of oils. It is a cup of decaffeinated coffee.

But Johno!?, you might ask in wonder? What happened to the solemn vows? What happened to the blood-oaths? What happened to the co-founder and manager of the coffeeshop that has so far given the Starbucks' empire a measurable fraction of its up-and-coming management team? Remember when you said that through your veins coursed the brown tears of the Bean? Remember that time in college you stayed up for eleven straight days, aided by your best friend and boon companion, coffee?

Yeah, so what? Somewhere along the way I turned thirty, the coffee in my veins turned to water, and I discovered that staying up all night at eighteen is a far cry from staying up all night at thirty, like running a mile is a far cry from running a mile with broken kneecaps. So, these days I tend to turn my penchant for stimulantary gourmandizing toward the heady and beguiling world of teas. There is an even bigger world of experience to discover, from the most plebian Assam blend to the most exotic monkey-picked Chinese oolong. Tea has some ancillary health benefits that I am only on the verge of imagining, my hands no longer shake, and when I sweat I no longer smell like I've bathed in gallons of Maxwell House.

So, decaf. Not all the time, not every day, but: decaf. When I want coffee but don't want the jitters: decaf. And sometime's it's just fine.

As we all know, decaffienated coffee is usually a sick joke. Coffee such as comes from diners, coffee carts, downscale restaurants and donut shops (including the mistakenly vaunted though perfectly inoffensive Dunkin Donuts coffee) isn't a beverage to be enjoyed so much as it is a caffeine delivery vector, different from the auto-antenna-cum-crackpipe only by the varying respectabilities of the stimulants in question. Now that's fine. But ask yourself: why would you drink that swill if not for the rush? If it's a crackpipe, why only pretend to smoke rock?

Decaf comes into its own only when the stakes get higher. You see, 8 oz. of diner coffee contains somewhere in the neighborhood of 180-210 mg of caffeine. Respectable, but not outrageous. By comparison, the same amount of a nice full city roasted Costa Rican or Papua New Guinea can contain 300 mg or more. Over the course of a 16-oz cup of joe, that's the same as having a whole extra cup of the regular stuff. Unless you're used to popping that much at once decaf becomes as much about portion control as it does about anything else. These days, if I were myself to dump 600 mg of caffeine right in the middle of my day, I would pass from "hyperactive child" to "cranky toddler" by dinnertime and spend the night sleeping fitfully and fighting off a bitch of a headache. If I had to guess, I would say that my years of wanton bean abuse in college and after have caught up with me.

But the point of all this was the coffee. The mug before me that is rapidly donating its thermal energy to the marble slab which keeps it stationary relative to the dominant local gravity well. This mug of decaf is delicious. It's a Colombian water-process decaf from Rao's Coffee Roasters in Amherst, Massachusetts, and I can say with total confidence that not only is it the best mug of low-octane I have ever tasted, it's very nearly the best mug of Colombian I have ever tasted. The Colombian flavor profile is all there, the medium body which balances a clear palate reminiscent of Costa Rican beans with an earthy tone like a good Brazilian, the bright caramel references in the nose and at the mid-tongue, the hints of spices at the back of the tongue, and a pronounced hint of cocoa in the finish. The decaffeinating process has undoubtedly dulled the flavors a little bit; the cocoa comes through a little more than it should since it rides the muddy note of the decaffeination, and the aftertaste doesn't linger like it should, but considering that this is a cup of decaf, and decaf can never quite be the same thing as the real dea, I can't complain.

Julia Child always said that it made more sense to live well than to merely live. She preferred one tiny sliver of buttercream-frosted carrot cake to an entire box of low-fat Snackwells, and I know what she means. If enjoying what you do gives your life texture and meaning, than doing what you enjoy is part of the point of life. For those who care about coffee, decaf is both like smoking an empty auto antenna and like eating a dozen Snackwells. Lucky for me, there's ways to cheat.

I am not under any contract for Rao's Coffee nor have they requested my services. I just happen to think that I owe it to the world to point out that the best coffee in the Eastern United States is available from them via a ruthlessly efficient and chipper mail order staff. Try their Kenya AA and their Brazilian Natural Dry high test, and their Colombian decaf; you'll be very, very happy you did.