today at doubleshot…

Photo by Marie Stark-Condé. Cold drip at Postcard Cafe.

On a recent trip to the Postcard Cafe, aptly named with its fabulous surroundings, I was inspired by the passion of Marie Stark-Condé to bring the flavourful elixir that coffee is to the people in a rare form. Marie has created a kind of „Penny University“ in an unusual  setting: unusual in that it is out of the city boundaries and thus only accessible by car and with the help of google maps. At least for your first visit. It’s on a wine estate, off the beaten track, in the Jonkershoek Valley, close to Stellenbosch.

Coffee and wine have endless similarities, so it is absolutely appropriate that Stark-Condé Wines offer the experience of Postcard Cafe. Actually as I write this post, I am sipping on a 2008 Stark-Condé Three Pines Cabernet Sauvignon unfined and unfiltered. It comes from a microlot of grapes on a higher altitude section of the farm, where some of the best cab grapes are to be had.

Marie uses Espresso Lab Microroasters beans and offers either  a Japanese-style cold drip or V60 pourover on the menu. I opted for a cold drip of Costa Rican Don Mayo, curious to taste a coffee we know well from our espresso blend and as a V60 pourover. It’s flavour overwhelmed me, and although it comes Tokyo-style, with a small jug of both sugar syrup and cold milk, I had it naked, poured over ice, and brimming with distinctive chocolate-orange notes.  It moved me in a spiritual way good coffee does, and since then we have been experimenting with our own kind of cold brews.

It is a challenge to mirror Marie’s elixirs from Postcard Cafe’s beautiful, hand-crafted cold drip stations, but we’re having fun and experiencing coffee in a different way. Our current method involves a plunger glass, coarsely ground coffee and roughly five times that amount of water, left overnight at room temperature, then cloth-filtered after removing the crust. So far we’ve cold-brewed a Kenyan Karimikui, a Yemen Mocha Harazi, and a Costa Rican Puente Ecologico Tarrazu, all from Espresso Lab. Our customers are loving sharing in this coffee journey.

“This is the meeting place! I’m Marieke from Grabouw and I’ve heard all about your coffee bar. I’ve brought my sculptures to surpise someone who has a nose for everything that’s good. She doesn’t know I’m here. But this is the meeting place.”

We were just wiping down our MIRAGE Triplette and emptying the Compak grinder for the night when we were swept away by the energy of Marieke Prinsloo and her beautiful sculptures from her series of cement sculptures of medium sized female figures with a limited edition of 100. Marieke’s done 40 to date and continuously working on the series, all unique. Two of the three she brought with her had imprints of two of Marieke’s sarongs, and the third a snippet of material and decoration from her wedding dress. Meeting all this energy and creativity in our Doubleshot-dedicated-to-coffee was amazing. One of the sculptures departed with The Meeting. The other two will remain at Doubleshot and mingle with the sweet smell of beans.

…Espresso Lab’s Xmas Blend with 35% Karimikui, Kenya, 35% Adado, Ethiopia and 30% Mocha Harazi, Yemen.  Can’t wait to unwrap the flavours!

This week we will be featuring a Kenya AA Top, Direct Trade Gatina coffee from the region of Nyeri. The coffee cherries are hand-picked, then washed and sun-dried on raised beds. This results in a remarkably clean and fresh flavour. Roasted by The Coffee Collective in Copenhagen, we are loving it as a pourover.