Obits

I wonder if anyone else noticed that today was not the greatest for beverage matters in that there were 3 obituaries in the Washington Post. The beer writer and expert, Michael Jackson (8/30/07). The founder of the Nobilo Winery of NZ, Nikola (Nick) Nobilo (8/28/07). The gourmet coffee man, Alfred Peet (8/29/07).

Jackson was only 65 but the others were in their 90s.

James Silverton Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

Reply to
James Silverton
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Yes, I noticed it, James. But Thank You for posting it. I did read that Michael Jackson was planning on writing a book on Parkinson's Disease. And the fact that there was no cause of death determined yet, made me wonder what was the real cause ( I'm not thinking 'drugs'). Dee Dee

Reply to
Dee Dee

Michael Jackson's last column was published here:

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along with a remembrance from the publisher. Jackson spoke about his disease in this last column.

Reply to
Tire Bouchon

Thanks for the update, Jim. I'd heard about the death of Michael Jackson, but not the other two. A personal reminiscence: back in the mid-'60s, my father started buying coffee from Mr. Peet out of a warehouse in Oakland. At that time, freshly roasted arabica beans were near to impossible to find in the US and my father, a European immigrant, had grown up with a taste for quality coffee, but had suffered for close to 30 years with what passed for coffee in the US (including a 6 year stint in the US army, where the coffee standards were, if anything, lower than in the US at large). As a grade schooler, one of my first jobs around the house was to make coffee after dinner, so from an early age I was exposed to the smell of freshly roasted beans. When Mr. Peet (a member of our church) finally opened his first retail outlet at Walnut Square in Berkeley in 1967, we were there to help him celebrate the occasion. I still buy Peet's coffee to this day, although the corporation bearing that name has had no personal connection to Mr. Peet himself since the early '80s. Fortunately, the business was bought by two ex-Peet's employees who'd moved to Seattle and started a coffee company by the name of Starbucks (and who'd sold the business to Howard Schultz in '87) and who've helped maintain the tradition of quality beans roasted fresh every day.

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

When I was in Berkeley a couple weeks ago the passing of Alfred Peet was, naturally, big news. I shudder to think what kind of crappy coffee we'd still be drinking if it weren't for him.

However, I don't believe Gordon Bowker, Jerry Baldwin or Zev Siegel, Starbucks founders, ever actually worked for Alfred before they bought the Peet's chain in 1984. They did buy green beans from him in 1971 for their first Starbucks operation.

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In the early months, each of the founders traveled to Berkeley to learn more about coffee roasting from their mentor, Alfred Peet, who urged them to keep deepening their knowledge of coffees and teas. For most of the first year, Starbucks ordered its coffee beans from Peet's, but then the partners purchased a used roaster from Holland and set up roasting operations in a nearby ramshackle building. Baldwin and Bowker experimented with Alfred Peet's roasting procedures and came up with their own blends and flavors.

Living in Seattle, home of America's Most Overrated and Overpriced Coffee (guess who) and Seattle's Worst Coffee (used to be known as "Seattle's Best" until Starbucks bought 'em out), I prefer to buy my coffee at Peet's. (Finally, they opened up here, less than two miles from my house.)

JJ

Reply to
jj

Interesting. I was in fact talking about Baldwin (who is with Peet's to this day) and Bowker. According to Baldwin's biography on Peet's website, he learned to select, blend and roast coffee from Mr. Peet in

1970
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which is a year before the founding of Starbucks. I also recall the story from a book "Uncommon Grounds" but could easily misremember it. I'll check in the book and see what it says.

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

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