Only Once

There are so many good things about coffee. 
The one that I thought of tonight 
after I roasted our last couple batches of the Honduras
was how no two coffees are alike. 
Or can be.

Coffee is a plant. 
It grows, it flowers, it bares fruit. 
The fruit ripens and then needs to be harvested. 
There an end to the harvest. 

The coffee that has been picked is all there will be for the season.
That season's crop will never be duplicated again.

Each season, each region, each farm, each plant comes together to produce something that is entirely unique. 

I love that about coffee.
Whether the coffee in my cup is the best I've ever had
or is as plain as it gets,
that's all there is,
and there is no more. 
And that the very thing that makes that coffee itself is fleeting.
It is not bottled or controlled,
or controllable. 

Though coffee is in our manmade systems and machines, it remains outside of them - 
year after year,
harvest after harvest,
batch after batch,
cup after cup.