Spice Up Your Life

I was introduced today by Through My Iphone's Robert to the heady delights of the Exchange Coffee Shop in a very rainy Blackburn (hence my misted-up iPhone shot). I am normally more of a wimpy decaf coffee drinker, but today I was seduced by the dark side. I decided to try a Mandheling Blue Sumatra cappuccino, described as 'full bodied with a Chocolatey taste'.

I read afterwards that Mandheling is technically an ethnic group in Indonesia, and not a producing region. Legend has it, the name came from a misunderstanding between an occupying Japanese soldier and a Mandheling coffee shop owner.

Postscript: Only a vaguely related anecdote, but I recently finished the brilliant book by Laurence Bergreen called 'Over the Edge of the World', and a gory account of the worlds first circumnavigation by Ferdinand Magellan, in search of a sea route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Setting sail in 1519 in 5 ships and with 260 men, Magellan was killed in a battle in the Philippines, and 3 years later only 1 ship and 18 survivors made it back. An amazing story, and well worth reading - if only to find out where Western obsessions with exotic spices like nutmeg and cloves first came from.