Though coffee production in Cuba has declined greatly since the 1950s, Cuban coffee is still well-known around the world, and drinking it is an important part of Cuban culture. The first coffee plantations in Cuba have even been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But history doesn’t necessarily mean quality.
Excited to try Cuban coffee, I was disappointed on a recent trip by the bitter, silty brew throughout Havana. Then I read this excellent article by Natalie Morales, where she mentions that she sends Cuban coffee from the United States to her family in Cuba.
“This is because Cuban coffee is too expensive for the average Cuban to buy in Cuba,” she writes. “So they make do—Cubans always make do—reusing old coffee or grinding in some split peas if they have to get their fix. I, on the other hand, buy it for three bucks at Target.”
While that insight didn’t make the coffee taste any better, it did make the fact that my hosts happily brewed it for me every morning much sweeter. In Cuba, coffee is a hallmark of hospitality and a vehicle for socialization. Coffee was offered everywhere I went, and according to Conner Gorry, a long time Havana resident, it is meant for visiting and gossip, not necessarily for taste and waking up.
Near the end of my trip I reached Viñales, a picturesque settlement of rusty fields and lush green hills in the Piñar del Rio region, and there found the coffee I’d been dreaming of. I visited a coffee plantation where a man named Payron walked me through the process of harvesting the Arabica beans by hand, then drying, pounding, and filtering them before serving the grounds like espresso, strong and concentrated, with sugar or honey.
Sitting in the shade of a thatched roof, I added honey and sipped coffee unlike anything I’d had all week. It was intensely flavored, the honey adding sweetness without masking the strength. Delicious. And the side of sugarcane blew my mind.
Home, knowing that I can buy Cuban coffee at Target and make it on my own (minus the sugarcane, sadly), I’m both excited to keep drinking it, and frustrated that Cubans in Havana and elsewhere are limited to minuscule rations and exorbitant prices. Hopefully that changes soon.
