The mention of Eight O'Clock Coffee and A&P Markets made me want to chime
in...
I mentioned in a previous post that my wife's family has been in the coffee
business in Norway for over two hundred years. (Friele Caffé, in Bergen).
The tradition had been that ships from Bergen would leave for Brazil with
aquavit in barrels in the hold, travel to Brazil and return with the green
coffee. Supposedly the aquavit was not nearly as good if its didn't go on
this long, over the equator and back round trip of several months, rolling
around in wooded barrels in the hold of a wooden ship...
I had said that both of my wife's grandfathers were coffee brokers. Her
mother's father was an American living in Santos, with his own brokerage.
Her paternal grandfather immigrated to the USA early in the last century. to
seek his own fortune. Even though he was the oldest son of three, and could
have had the coffee business in Bergen, he didn't want it. (The next oldest
brother Haakon, had already left Norway to seek his fortune with the salmon
industry in Alaska and Seattle, the third brother Inar died in the War as
part of the Norwegian Resistance. It's now Inar's son, Herman that runs
Friele Caffé).
Berent Friele was THE coffee buyer for A&P for most of the 20's, 30's, 40's,
and 50's. That's how the two families met, Berent from New York, doing
business with Harold LaDomus in Santos. So in a way, the history of A&P
Eight O' Clock Brazilian coffee, is partly our family history as well. It's
the reason why my wife was born in Brazil, and not New York, and lived her
first 20 years there, even though she was an American by birth. (Her father
left New York after serving in the US Amy Special Forces after WWII and
married the girl he'd met on family vacations in Brazil, Harold's daughter
Irene).
There is nothing on the Eight O'Clock website that says where their coffee
comes from now, but historically at least, it was from Brazil, not Colombia,
though that may not be the case today. Friele Caffé in Norway is still
predominately Brazilian. Our thank-you presents to our bridesmaids and
groomsmen twenty years ago at our wedding were foil packets of Friele Caffé
from Norway...
Ummm, makes me want to get a hot cup of coffee!
Tony Reynolds and Jaqueline Friele Reynolds
(from Seattle, where the summer's short and the leopard slugs are long...)
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