why cairé · why oregon
Why Cairé.
Coffee ruled by the moon, and the reasons.
i · the name
The moon has a name.
Long before anyone had a word for coffee, the Tupi had a name for the full moon: Cairé, the face that keeps watch over the fields at night.
In our legend she walked the dark between the plants and pulled the first coffee tree up into the light. Then she gave each of her eight faces a god, and each god a cup.
That is how we drink it. By the moon: the cup before the sun is up, the cup after everyone is asleep. So the moon picks tonight’s blend, and A Ordem sends the next god every 29 days, one moon at a time.
I sing of Cairé and the moon,
of coffee born in Tupã’s storm,
of eight dark faces in the sky
and one red river taking form.
ii · the cover
Every box is a cover.
In the markets of Brazil’s Nordeste, poets hung their booklets on a string, a cordel, and read them aloud to whoever stopped. Nobody opened one before buying. They chose by the woodcut on the cover.
So every Cairé box is a cordel cover: one god, in woodcut, in black, one red and the blend’s own colour. Nineteen covers. Judge them.
iii · the company
Not the polite gods.
These were never the gods of good behaviour, and we like them that way.
Latina & queer-owned, and in good company.
Iara
sings sailors into the river.
Curupira
walks backwards, so you follow the wrong way.
Boto
steals the dance, and the girl.
Boitatá
a serpent made of fire.
iv · the place
Why Oregon.
Coffee doesn’t grow in Oregon. It doesn’t need to. Coffee grows in the sun; it’s roasted for the dark.
Ours is roasted to order in the high desert of central Oregon, where the nights are long and the sky is dark enough for the moon to throw shadows. Each box is roasted the week you order it and sent from there.
The beans come from Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mexico, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, and the matcha from Japan. The night they’re roasted under is Oregon’s.
So drink by moon,
as Cairé said.