"I love coffee, I love tea, I love the java jive and it loves me."
Many people around Greenwood these days love the java just about anyway they can get it.
While no Starbucks lifts its green-and-white trademark over the city, we still get our favorites, either at the coffee bar at Delta Fresh Market or in the local grocery stores.
You meet the nicest people over a cup of coffee. Just ask anyone who eases into the Delta Fresh Market's coffee lounge and reposes on the leather couch with one of their freshly brewed cups.
We spotted Ann Fann last week in the corner, having a cup of java with a few friends.
Catherine Mayhew, the market manager, says many people come in and try the Green Mountain blends.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters offers many blends, Mayhew said.
Many customers drink the Our Blend, she said.
We've tried this light-roast, smooth, aromatic coffee. It's a nice house blend and great way to begin enjoying gourmet coffees.
A lot of people put their dollars where their politics are. That's one of the reasons Green Mountain Coffee seeks the Fair Trade Certification.
That little stamp on the bag means that Green Mountain ensures farmers are paid a fair wage for their work. In turn, this strengthens and helps agricultural communities.
Perhaps more than that, purchasing Fair Trade Certified coffee helps local farms exist without so much dependency on foreign aid.
Politics aside, the hot liquid just tastes good any way you take it.
But if you want to go home, then stop by a local grocer. All of Greenwood's local stores have plenty of coffee to offer these days.
Derrick Simpson, manager of Greenwood Market Place, enjoys simple pleasures. He tries to cut back on caffiene, but when he has to have a jolt in the morning, Simpson prefers Community Coffee.
Most of us are familiar with that red packaging, which reminds some of us of where Community got its start. That's right. The Red Stick.
Henry Norman "Cap" Saurage started roasting beans and brewing coffee about eight decades ago in Baton Rouge, La.
And for many Southerners, that's the only coffee.
But Community isn't the big seller in Simpson's store. The San Francisco Bay coffees nearly jump off the shelves, the manager told us.
"That's what we sell most of," he said.
Founded in 1979 by Jon Rogers, because he, a marketing executive, searched for a perfect cup of coffee, JBR Gourmet Foods became reality a second mortgage later. Now the parent company is known as the Rogers Family Company.
San Francisco Bay Coffee was Rogers' first company. Their aim: that perfect, rich cup.
But if that doesn't work for you, you can always reach back for the old standard. Many folks still line up for Folgers.
No matter your brand, most coffee drinkers will tell you the best conversations and the best times come over a cup of steaming java.
Bottoms up.
A brief history of how coffee came to us
Coffee had its beginnings in Ethiopia, where the plant grew wild. The Galla people didn't drink a brew, but took the berries from coffee plants, put them in animal fat and used them as sustinence on raids.
Eventually, the plants made their way to Arabia, where qahwa became a delicacy, and rulers made laws forbidding the export of coffee plants outside of Moslem counties.
Here are a few dates gathered from various historical sources to give you a timeline of coffee:
13th century - Turks turn coffee into a drink. They crush the beans and mix the brew with water and spices and boiled.
15th century - First coffee houses open in Mecca. The Ibrik, an hourglass-shaped boiling pot, was invented to speed up preparation of what became known as Turkish coffee.
1150s - Coffee houses opened in Constantinople and Damascus.
1616 - Dutch smuggle a coffee plant out of Yemen, and the brew comes to Europe.
1650 - First coffee house opens in Italy.
1658 - Dutch begin cultivating coffee in its colonies of Ceylon and Java. The drink from the colonies become so popular, coffee gets the name "Java."
1670 - First coffee house opens in the New World in Boston, Mass.
1700s - The number of coffee houses in London reaches 2,000. Lloyds of London, the famous insurer, gets its start during this decade as a coffee house.
Coffee lexicon
Acidity - Taste those high, thin notes, the dryness the coffee leaves at the back of your palate and under the edges of your tongue? This pleasant tartness, snap, or twist is what coffee people call acidity. It should be distinguished from sour, which in coffee terminology means an unpleasant sharpness.
Arabica - "Coffee Arabica" is the species name assigned to the coffee tree by European botanist Linnaeus while categorizing the flora of the Arabian peninsula. Arabica are the beans of choice in "gourmet" or "specialty" coffees.
Arabica coffee produces the rich flavor and body found in a good cup of coffee.
Aroma - The sensation of the gases released from brewed coffee, ranging from fruity to herby, as they are inhaled through the nose. Strictly speaking, aroma can't be separated from acidity and flavor. Acidy coffees smell acidy, and richly flavored coffees smell richly flavored.
Aromatic - Designates a coffee that fully manifests the aroma characteristic of its nature and origin.
Balanced - This is a difficult term. When tasting coffees for defects, professional tasters use the term to describe a coffee that does not localize at any one point on the palate; in other words, it is not imbalanced in the direction of some one (often undesirable) taste characteristic. As a term of general evaluation, balance appears to mean that no one quality overwhelms all others, but there is enough complexity in the coffee to arouse interest. A well-balanced coffee contains all the basic characteristics to the right extent.
