The Visitor from Colombe

If any of you are fans of the hit Travel Channel series "Dangerous Grounds" then you will be interested in this latest event that happened over at one of our local shops on Wednesday. Dangerous Grounds is a show about Todd, the owner of La Colombe and a coffee saucier. That means he is well versed in the art of cupping and identifying the different varieties and flavors of coffee.

In his last show, which aired on Tuesday night, Todd was searching out a very rare coffee from the high mountains in Guatemala.  The story is great but since this is a blog I won't be able to relate all of the twists turns and near death situations that Todd and "Hollywood", his cameraman got into to before securing the rare bean from the La Perla Plantation. What a great show.

Fast-forward to Wednesday morning, I your humble editor, was serving the first customer of the day, a slightly build, well-spoken Frenchman with an appetite for a single shot of espresso.

You can always tell a coffee-phile because they usually will only order a single shot of espresso to start off their conversations. It's our way of testing the waters of sorts, before  wading  into the deep.

After trading pleasantries my visitor, Nicolas, asked me about who I purchased my coffee from. I told him that we work with a local roaster but that as fate would have it, we had just ordered our own roasting machine that morning. He was ecstatic for our business.

I then asked him, "And you, what do you do for a living?" He said "Oh I am a coffee roaster too." Really!!! Now, I have been trying to get a bead on all of the coffee roasters in the Las Vegas area. I only know of 3. How could it be that I missed this one? As a matter of fact, I had just confirmed that there were only a handful of roasters the day before when I was speaking with Stefanie Frank of Frankly Good Coffee.

So who could this interloper be who claimed that yes he too was a local roaster! "Well, what is the name of your company? I asked. "La Colombe", he answered. Gafaugh!!!...are you kidding me. I all but called him a liar. "You don't really work for La Colombe. I was just watching Todd on TV last night", I said. "Yeah, Todd is my boss, he replied.

I was flabbergasted. How could this be. How fortunate could I be that the first customer I served would be a 20 year veteran of the trade and part of the La Colombe dynasty. We laughed and spoke of such heady things like...well coffee of course and how Las Vegas really needed to experience a renaissance in coffee culture as much of the civilized world had already experienced and now enjoys.

He told me to encouraged the people who are putting their collective heads together to create a coffee culture here in the City of Lights. When he left he said that when he returned that he would share some of the Guatemalan beans secured by Todd.

Truly we are on the right track. We had a visit by the Man from Colombe.

Sherman Ray
Editor
LVCCM