When you think about coffee what first come to your mind is Cafe au lait and beignets, Greek coffee and baklava, and Cuban coffee and tostadas, those are just a few of the international and unique coffee pairings, despite of this fact, Thanks to this Cuba Holidays you will illuminate the ...
Cuban Coffee: The black nectar of the gods.
When you think about coffee what first come to your mind is Cafe au lait and beignets, Greek coffee and baklava, and Cuban coffee and tostadas, those are just a few of the international and unique coffee pairings, despite of this fact, Thanks to this Cuba Holidays you will illuminate the importance of coffee culture and tradition in most of all Cuban communities, where they lie outside the culture that we call "specialty," even as they are themselves special and specialized., These localized rituals have managed to survive despite hybridization and homogenization of the Cuban coffee scene.
Cuban coffee, for one, has been involved in a unique interplay between the economic, social and political factors that allowed this culture to develop. The story of Cuban coffee contains two other important elements: cigars and, in many cases, revolutionary politics. And nowhere is this truer than in the eastern region of the country.
Visiting Santiago de Cuba City: The Cradle of Cuban Coffee.
Santiago de Cuba is a very good choice while being on Holidays in Cuba. It is located in the eastern region of Cuba and it was founded as a village in 1514 by the Spaniards. Today, after many centuries, it is one of Cuba’s most beautiful sites. This is a charming place for spending luxury holidays in Cuba.
The city is surrounded by the sea and the Sierra Maestra mountain range, the best place for cultivating Cuban Coffee, with a view that will be unforgettable for any visitor that will spend there his luxury holidays. The city of Santiago de Cuba shows itself as a place of hilly streets with most of the comfortable of Cuba Hotels with also interesting tourist sites and a history constantly related to the independence struggle of Cuba. Excellent tourist facilities and the permanent smile assure a happy stay in this eastern province of Cuba, no matter for the season if its summer or winter, there are always sunny days in Santiago, therefore, you can spend there your Christmas holidays without worrying about temperature. For those who love the Cuban traditional cosine and want to enjoy their Caribbean holidays tasting a delicious “ macho asado” , the people from Santiago de Cuba will offer you the most exquisite and traditional form of cooking pork meat in Cuba, while hurrying a cool beer amid the typical heat of Santiago. That is why this province of Cuba is called La Tierra Caliente (The Hot Land). An there is the strong Cuban tradition of drinking at the end of any meal, or presiding over a conversation, the smoky cup of strong and black coffee is something else that cannot be missed on your Cuba Holidays.
Santiago de Cuba has been considered the “Coffee Capital of the World.”
Santiago de Cuba is replete with wrought-iron balconies, globe streetlights, brick-lined walkways and the majestic architecture of cigar factories and coffee stores that provide a glimpse into a bygone era.
For more than half a century, Santiago de Cuba has been considered the “Coffee Capital of the World.” Early in the 20th century, between 70 and 100 coffee plantation families have lived there. Santiago de Cuba has everything you will need to make your package holidays an event that you will never forget as well as, it has everything Cuban Coffee producers’ need: a railroad, a port and a warm climate that was a natural humidor for the coffee grains.
During this amazing Cuba Holidays you will discover that while the Cuban Coffee industry was thriving, Santiago de Cuba was alive with Cuban culture and identity. Most of residents of the Sierra Maestra mountain range depend on Coffee production for a living that is why they dedicate their strong efforts to produce the best Cuban Coffee of all. They throw considerable light on the economic, social, and technological history of the Caribbean and Latin American region. Santiago de Cuba’s past is very much a part of its present. Today, the city’s shopping, dining and entertainment is where Cuban-style coffee and the ancient art of premium hand-rolled cigar making live on.
Sierra Maestra the best place for cultivating Cuban Coffee
The remains of the 19th-century coffee plantations in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra are unique evidence of a pioneer form of agriculture in a difficult terrain. Living the experience of tasting the hands holding coffee-beans drink on the Bicentenary of Cuban Coffee Cultivation is an opportunity only given to you on this Caribbean Holidays in Cuba.
Regarding Cuban Coffee, UNESCO states that the remains of the 19th and early 20th century coffee plantations in eastern Cuba are unique and eloquent testimony to a form of agricultural exploitation of virgin forest, the traces of which have disappeared elsewhere in the world. The production of coffee in eastern Cuba during the 19th and early 20th centuries resulted in the creation of a unique cultural landscape, illustrating a significant stage in the development of this form of agriculture. For over two centuries Cuba has produced the finest Arabica coffee in the world, the flavour of which captures the excitement and passion of its people. Thanks to this all inclusive holidays in Cuba, this passion can be yours too, so do not think it twice, travel to Cuba on this summer holidays and taste one of its wonders the Cuban Coffee.
Two Cities, Two products rolled Together
Cuban coffee surely brings Baracoa city to mind, where old and young Cuban men dream and scheme about a hot and black cup of Cuban coffee to start their days every morning, sweet concoction that is called Cuban coffee or Cuban espresso. Here, Cuban coffee is the fuel that keeps Cuban people identity and idiosyncrasy alive as well as Cuban rum. Internationally, it is the pride of all Cuban, thanks to Cuban coffee world wide international fame , Cubans work harder and harder in order to keep its quality and prestige as high as it always have been. There is, however, another Cuban coffee culture — one tied to another Cuban product—and it is Cuban Habano.
Those not familiar with both Cuban Coffee and Habano believe the two Cuban products has nothing in common, however only this holidays in Cuba will help you to find out that they are very much alike as the sun and the land. Both have historically been tied to Cuba and its revolutions—as they both have been consumed from the “mambises” on the fist Independence war to “rebeldes” on the last one. The strong combination of Cuban Coffee and Cuban Habano has passed time and culture and nowadays remains as powerful as ever.
There is another strong link that Cuban coffee has made and this is the combination of two eastern cities Santiago de Cuba and Baracoa, on this Cuba Holidays you will realize that unless these are two very different cities and cultures, they are connected thanks to the Cuban coffee plantations. In both cities is produced the best Cuban coffee of all due to their weather and land conditions. In addition, in both cities Cuban men, women and even children cultivated with devotion as Cuban coffee is the favourite drink of the gods.
And while you are enjoying the best of your Caribbean Holidays you can still enjoy a good cigar and a Cuban coffee in both of these cities, it is in Santiago de Cuba where the two products became closely associated. Santiago de Cuba is perhaps the only city in the world where all Cuba Holidays makers can enjoy a quality hand-rolled cigar from a third-generation cigar roller while drinking a Cuban espresso roasted by a third-generation roaster — both of whom are local. As you can see it is worth to travel to Santiago de Cuba on this luxury holidays in order to give your senses its own party. On your visit to Santiago you can see how Cuban Coffee is cultivated, touch the grains on its plants, listen to the stories and anecdotes of old Cuban coffee producer, smell the fine aroma of Cuban coffee and finally the best of all senses taste this delicious Cuban drink. Your all senses will be on a party on this holiday in Cuba.
Learning what Cuban Coffee is?
Let us begin with how Cuban coffee is cultivated, at least in most of the eastern region of Cuba. Cuban coffee has its world wide fame thanks to the weather conditions, quality of the land and the devotion on its cultivation of the Cuban people of the Sierra Maestra. Since the Coffee seeds are plants to the collection of the coffee grains, it takes a long period of time full of attention and care, when the grain is ready to be collected it is put on the “tendals” in order to be dried by the sun light. Then the coffee grains are sent to the “tostaderos” where they are toasted and finally milled. Then, the Coffee is packed and it is ready for selling in brands like Cubita, Serrano, Monte Rouge, Indiana, Caracolillo among others of the Cuban Coffee brands that are worldly recognize because of its quality. Only during your Cuba Holidays you can witness the whole process from the start, visiting the Cuban coffee plantations, taking part in the recollection process, and finally tasting the delicious result of your work. That is what Cuban coffee is, the result of the work of many of Cubans that like to put their effort in order to keep the Cuba coffee name as above as it always be.
Cuban coffees are grown and cultivated under the forest canopies of the Sierra Maestra Mountains, in fine deep soil rich in humus and without the use of chemical products. Cuba’s climate, soil conditions and careful cultivation make for an almost faultless production. Do not wait for your friends histories about what they lived in Cuba on their Cuba Holidays. Take the first Cuba Flights you can and travel to this island that has a special aura that protects her and this is the smoke of the Cuban Coffee.
Discovering the origin of the Cuba Coffee on this Christmas Holidays in Cuba
While you are spending the best of your Cuba Holidays you will learn that the origins of Cuba's coffee can be traced to a single plant introduced by Jose Antonio Gelabert in 1748; however the industry did not flourish until 50 years later when French Colonists who had fled the Haitian Revolution settled in Cuba. These coffee plants found an ideal home in the most fertile soil and perfect climate in the world. The standards set by the early planters have been carried on through two centuries by the dedication of the Cuban people.
Though Cuba has never been known as a volume producer of the bean, in contrast it has earned the reputation as the finest producer of quality coffee and because of this Cuban coffee occupies a privileged position in the European and Asian markets. There are several countries that produce more coffee than Cuba; however none can match the Cuban quality. You can state that too as soon as you taste the unique flavour of Cuban Coffee on this also unique Caribbean Holiday in Cuba.
Cuban coffee will delight, revive and stimulate your senses
Whether it is the first cup in the morning to get the day started or a leisurely drink in the evening amongst friends the Cubans' day is enriched by a coffee that reflects their passion for life. You will discover that your life is not going to be the same as soon as you have your first cup of Cuban Coffee, you will feel renew and with stronger desires of living life, starting, of course on this magical holidays in Cuba.
Café de Cuba is delighted to introduce this treasured coffee to the all the countries around the world, however it is not the same to taste it here in its natural condition, while listening to Cuban Music and may be mixing it with Cuban rum in a typical “Carajillo”, those a re just few ideas of what this luxury holidays in Cuba would be.. At any time of the day, Cuban coffee will delight, revive and stimulate the senses, allowing Cuban coffee lovers to enjoy the Cuban experience
A Long Tradition
Cuban coffee can be both a drink and a type of roasted coffee. Most of the Cuba Holidays makers who have experienced Cuban coffee in passing think first of the drink, which is memorable and then in the delicious aroma that Cuban Coffee has. We are sure that on this Caribbean Holidays in Cuba you will drink Cuban coffee as the medicine this coffee surely is, with the ability to jumpstart the most flagging of hearts--if not from the coffee, then from the sugar. The coffee may be made with an espresso machine or with a traditional stovetop cafeteria (moka pot), with the shot pulled or the coffee poured over the sugar. Both products, Cuban Coffee and Cuban sugar made the combination of energy that you will need to make of this all inclusive Holidays in Cuba the explosion of your feelings, you will feel new, fresh, healthy and full of ideas as soon as you drink your first Cuban Coffee on this memorable Cuba Holidays.
In many ways, the history of Cuban coffee can be your history as well. Since the very moment that you find yourself in Santiago de Cuba on this summer holidays, light up a nice, locally hand-rolled corona or torpedo, and order up a café Cubano. Before you know it, you may have enough energy to start your own revolution.
Some suggesting recipes of the traditional Cuban Coffee
Cuban coffee as we know it today is actually a blend of Cuban, Spanish and Italian coffee traditions. Cuban Coffee is the result of a melting pot of cultures and traditions. It was from these three countries, primarily, that Cuban coffee producers emigrated in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
Cuban Coffee
Pour two tablespoons of sugar in a demitasse cup. Brew coffee using a Cuban-style espresso and an espresso machine (or stovetop). When coffee is ready, pour 1.5ounces of hot coffee into the cup. And be ready to taste the best of your holidays in Cuba.
Café Con Leche
Heat milk on the stove, or steam it using an espresso machine. Brew coffee using a Cuban-style espresso and an espresso machine (or stovetop). When coffee is ready, pour heated milk (make sure there is no foam) into a six-ounce cup with coffee. This Cuban Coffee will be your best friend for starting your mornings on this Cuba Holidays.
Cuban Cappuccino
Pour a double shot of Cuban espresso into a six-ounce cup. Add two teaspoons of sugar. Fill the cup with warm whipped cream. There is nothing best to end the days of your Caribbean Holidays in Cuba.
Cuban Espresso
While you are enjoying your summer holidays in Cuba we advise you to go to any grocery store in the country, and you will see many coffees with such names as: Cubita, Serrano, Monte Rouge, Indiana, to name a few. Most if not all of these coffees are ground and brick-packed in brightly colour foil packages. Some of these coffees are blends, some are straights, but they all are very darkly roasted. This type of roast is often called a dark French or Spanish roast, and it has an ending bean temperature near 475 degrees Fahrenheit, or an Agtron rating near 25, giving this coffee a fairly one-dimensional, uniformly dark, almost burnt flavour. Combined with copious amounts of sugar, however, this roast can be a sweet, syrupy treat.
One Family’s Story with Cuban Coffee roots
At the age of 13, Juan José Llanes Emigrated from Asturias, Spain, started cultivating Coffee beans on the Sierra Maestra Mountain range. He began roasting coffee for other workers, working out of his family’s house. In 1924, he founded his own Coffee Mill and moved to a warehouse, and in the mid-1940s, he bought the roaster that his grandsons and great-grandson still roast on today: a three-bag Jabez Burns Thermalo. When visiting their facility, the first thing you notice is that grandsons Pedro and Juan José do the bulk of the work. While Pedro's wife, Aurora, collects the best of the coffee beans, Pedro roasts on the ancient Jabez Burns, Juan José deals with the Chemistry part of fertilizers and Pedro's son Ernesto humps coffee to keep the big three-bagger fed. With the assistance of the whole family as you can see, the Llanes family has been producing coffee in la Sierra Maestra for more than 60 years. During your Cuba Holidays you can visit them and know from their moth how the family has improved their knowledge thanks to their experience and the possibility of studying that Cuban revolution has offer to their younger members.
That is not so say the business has not changed. Pedro is developing specialty coffee plantations more along the lines of what is now considered a traditional specialty coffee model. In an accent that is one-part Spanish, one-part Italian and all Cuban, Pedro comments on his family values: "Even though the specialty side of our plantations is growing, Cuban coffee has possibilities of being even better and that is because of each coffee beans has something of our hearts in it” One point Pedro made repeatedly is that there is no ideal Cuban coffee recipe; it just has to be "very dark and very sweet."
La Isabelica: A place of love and legend
A love affair between a French settler and his slave Isabel Maria, trapped in eastern Cuba’s coffee plantations, turns out a mighty attraction worth paying a visit to in this corner of Santiago de Cuba during your Cuba Holidays.
While visiting La Isabelica as part of your all inclusive holidays in Cuba you will see plenty of rest of the colonial culture, while the environment still features old coffee plantations and grain dryers that were in the hands of former French masters and African slaves. The hushed sauntering of Isabel Maria is still overheard around the farm estate that was turned into a museum back in 1976.
At La Isabelica, we can travel in time, a unique possibility given to you by this Cuba Holidays, to 200 years ago and live the place’s loving and noble grandeur all over again. The surrounding coffee plantations and grain dryers witnessed the sweat in slaves’ brows and the desire for freedom in a population that was virtually weeded out of its traditions and creeds.
For those Cuba Holidays makers that like to add something of love and passion to their Caribbean Holidays in Cuba, for those who love larger-than-life and fantasized love stories, there is one for the books at La Isabelica. History and flights of the imagination meet in this gorgeous landscape of the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba. This is a story that rekindles pride for the blending of different cultures: Spanish, African, Haitian, French and Asian.
The story goes that Frenchman Victor Constantin, the estate owner, never had a wife or any white woman as a companion. However, a slave of his named Isabel Maria used to fill every nook and cranny around that house near La Gran Piedra.
The love story with Cuban Coffee aroma
Be ready for knowing the true love story on this summer holidays. This love yarn began to be spun when from neighbouring Haiti, in the middle of the Slave Revolution, came masters, maidens and cultures that settled down over 1,200 meters above sea level atop La Gran Piedra, now a world-class tourist centre that lies near the city of Santiago de Cuba.
Huge coffee plantations sprung up there during the 18th and 19th centuries, yet the most visible footprint was left by La Isabelica farm estate. The owner named it after his favourite slave, Isabel Maria.
The hushed sauntering of Isabel Maria can still be overheard around the premises of La Isabelica, turned into a museum back in 1976 and whose many details take us in an imaginary trip to the way of life of French settler Victor Constantin.
While visiting the museum on this package holidays you will see that the spacious mansion has two stories. The lower floor is dominated by the carpentry and the warehouse, filled with axes, machetes, dregs of glassware, shackles and other tools and means that marked that particular time. The warehouse was used as a barnyard and showcases the remnants of an old-timed coffee grain rolling pin and five dryers shaped in the form of terraces, plus a mill used at the time to ret the dried grains of coffee.
The upper floor still features the original bell that was tolled to call slaves to the exhausting work or back to their short-lived rest. As witnesses of a splendorous time now long gone, the house still preserves the living room, the dining room, the studio, the library and the master bedroom that treasures the memories of so heart-throbbing a love story. Taking pictures of this amazing scenery will be the best souvenirs of this Cuba Holidays.
In an effort to keep the noble environment around the house intact, a few objects were rescued from nearby coffee plantations and farms, like an older-than-the-hills piano, the French coat of arms used at the time, Medallion-style furniture and chinaware.
Victor Contantin’s portray welcomes visitors in the main room of the old-timed mansion. With his image, fantasy and imagination pop up everywhere as silent onlookers of that secret love kept down deep inside by Isabel Maria, one of the maidens that did chores around the house and brought so many nights of love and passion to his French master. Suffice it say that such romancing was strictly forbidden during the colonial rule.
The story goes on that Isabel Maria was pretty aware of his master's tiniest details and tastes. She was never freed despite being officially married to his master. She died a slave, despite being the master of that huge farm estate.
Many Cuba Holidays makers get to La Isabelica each year, some of them flummoxed by the legend and the attractiveness of the place. This is a site of eastern Cuba that seems to revive the enlightened past of a culture that got tangled up in the insular geography of the island nation and gave rise to new ways of living and doing.
Remainders of a colonial past
La Isabelica lays bares the traces of a colonial culture. The surroundings still feature the same coffee plantations and trails that were traipsed up and down by waves of French masters and African slaves. Once you are there you will feel like you are in the past centuries and everything seems to be so natural and beautiful that you do not want to leave the place as well as you do not want to end this amazing Cuba Holidays.
The ruins of dozens of French-Haitian coffee farm estates that dotted the entire region in the late 18th century and the early 19th century, now add a new look to Santiago de Cuba. Two of the best-known settlements there were Santa Sofia and Kentucky.
But out of that magnificent pack La Isabelica keeps its footprint very much fresh nowadays. And as time-proof reminders of that glorious past, the ruins of that former coffee empire that played a major role in the economic development of the colonial-ruled island at the time still stand tall for everyone to see. The La Isabelica Museum, declared Heritage of Mankind by UNESCO in the year 2000, cherishes both highly historical values and a cultural fortune conveyed in the prosperity of some artistic manifestations as dancing, music, religion, literature and cuisine from the eastern side of the country, expressions that spilled way beyond the insular boundaries and reached out to other Caribbean islands. This could be the end of what seems to be a Cuba Holidays full of new tastes, aromas and experiences. We are sure that you will be sooner than expected tasting the delicacy of Cuban Coffee in this island that from this moment on is yours too.
Source: http://www.thecubaexperience.co.uk/articles.asp?id=236