Gloria Jean Knew

Some people tell you they love coffee.

Gloria Jean Kvetko lived it with joy.

She was bright, kind, effervescent, full of life. Coffee delighted her. So did people. I remember her smile, her laughter, and how quickly our conversation moved from polite appreciation into something far more interesting.

Gloria had spent years in coffee. She understood the business. She understood customers. She understood aroma, presentation, discovery, ritual, and the pleasure surrounding a cup.

She also understood what she was tasting.

I complimented her coffee.

I tend to do that. There is usually something worthwhile to recognize in another person's work, and I prefer beginning there.

Gloria heard me.

Then her posture changed.

Her shoulders shifted. Her expression became wonderfully comical. A grin appeared.

Her whole body offered the answer.

Get real.

I laughed.

She knew exactly what I was doing.

So did I.

That became part of the fun.

By then, I had become increasingly obsessive about green coffee selection. Grade 1 represented the highest established commercial classification I had encountered.

I wanted the finest coffee available inside Grade 1.

Then I wanted to push beyond what the classification itself required.

Bean integrity mattered. Agricultural condition mattered. Sorting mattered. Roasting mattered. Aromatic development mattered.

The coffee needed to survive inspection before it ever reached the grinder.

So I tried a little experiment.

I opened two bags of Gloria's coffee and waited.

I wanted to see when the aroma reached me.

I stood there.

From where I was standing, I detected nothing.

Then she opened one bag of mine.

I was roughly three feet away.

The aroma reached me immediately.

Deep. Fresh. Expansive. Alive.

Then we looked at the beans.

In the bags of hers I opened, I found broken pieces, gnarled beans, quakers, and other visible agricultural imperfections.

The coffees I had brought presented differently.

Whole beans. Clean selection. Physical integrity.

Across our coffees, I had pushed for the elimination of broken beans and visible agricultural defects because every physical detail carried evidence of the standard behind the cup.

Gloria saw it.

Then we ground the coffee.

Everything intensified.

The aromatics opened immediately and filled the space around us.

Then Gloria tasted.

She would periodically stop, take another sip, and become completely still.

Her eyes rolled upward while she concentrated on what was happening in the cup.

She held it there for a moment.

Then the concentration broke.

Out came that laugh.

Bright. Ineffable. Completely unguarded.

She did it again.

Another sip.

Stillness.

Eyes upward.

Concentration.

Then the smile arrived and the laughter followed.

I loved watching it happen.

There was something wonderfully young in that laughter. Years in coffee had sharpened her judgment and preserved her capacity for delight.

Here was a woman who had devoted an extraordinary part of her life to coffee, tasting mine with complete concentration, then breaking into laughter because the experience gave her that much pleasure.

She kept smiling.

She kept tasting.

She kept enjoying herself.

Her love for coffee filled the moment.

That told me something important about Gloria.

She loved the craft enough to recognize excellence wherever she encountered it.

Gloria had built a life around coffee. She understood what aroma could do. She understood choice, pleasure, presentation, discovery, and the emotional relationship people could develop with a cup.

I was pursuing another expression of the category.

Luxury.

Extreme selection.

Extreme standards.

The highest reaches of Grade 1.

Coffee required to withstand scrutiny from the physical bean through roasting, grinding, brewing, aromatic release, flavor, finish, and the experience surrounding the cup.

Gloria understood what I was pursuing very quickly.

She examined the beans.

She experienced the aroma.

She watched what happened when the coffee met the grinder.

She tasted carefully.

Then those eyes went upward again.

A moment of concentration.

And that laugh.

That mattered to me.

I respected what she had built.

She respected what I was building.

Coffee gave us common ground.

Years later, when I learned Gloria had died, I felt the loss deeply.

Certain people remain connected to a period of your life through photographs, contracts, correspondence, press releases, or old business records.

Gloria remains with me through laughter.

I can still see that wonderfully comic posture when I complimented her coffee.

She knew.

I knew.

Then the bags opened.

The beans came out.

The grinder started.

The aroma filled the space between us.

She lifted the cup.

She sipped.

Her eyes went upward.

She concentrated.

Then Gloria Jean Kvetko broke into that ineffable laugh again.

I loved that about her.

Her joy carried strength.

Her kindness carried confidence.

Her love of coffee reached beyond her company and her own work. She could encounter something extraordinary, give it her complete attention, and surrender to the pleasure of discovering it.

All these years later, that is what stays with me.

I remember the coffee.

I remember what she recognized in our standards.

I remember how carefully she tasted.

I remember her eyes lifting as she studied the cup.

Most of all, I remember Gloria.

Smiling.

Laughing.

Delighted by coffee all over again.

For a woman who gave so much of her life to the cup, that is exactly how I want to remember her.

Bryan-David Scott

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