For Tempe coffee roaster, the perfect cup is about intention and slowing down

At some point last year, I stepped out for a mid-afternoon coffee. There was this small, dimly-lit cafe across the street from my apartment building, and I figured I’d wander in and check it out.

When I got there, the barista — a dignified man with a salt-and-pepper beard and twinkling eyes — looked me right in the eye. Before I could say anything, he said, “Can I make you the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had?”

And who says no to that?

As I watched him begin moving around deliberately behind the counter, he began telling me a story about the man in Costa Rica who grew the coffee he was grinding. He placed a filter in a brewing cradle, moistened it with hot water, and filled it with the grounds. As he began painstakingly pouring water through the grounds, he told me more about the coffee grower and his farm — what the trees there looked like, and how the air smells in the morning.

After maybe 10 minutes, he finally poured the ink-black coffee into a cup, and handed it to me. I took a sip. Son of a gun. It was the best cup of coffee I’d ever tasted. I remember stepping out into the afternoon sun, and feeling like I’d just come back from a refreshing vacation.

The only bad thing about this experience is that I’d forgotten to ask the barista’s name. And when I went back to the cafe, he wasn’t there. So I resigned myself to dreaming about that perfect cup — until one day, when a friend sent me an email saying he’d just had a fantastic cup of coffee, and suggested that I interview the man who made it: Ron Cortez. So I Googled Ron — and there was the dignified man with the salt and pepper beard.

Ron, it turns out, is the founder of Cortez Coffee Roasters, a coffee roaster based here in the Valley. And so I did invite Ron to come on and talk coffee. When we sat down in the studio he said: “let’s have a jam session.”

Cortez Coffee Roasters

Full conversation

SAM DINGMAN: How did you make that amazing cup of coffee?

RON CORTEZ: You have to go back in time. You have to imagine yourself, a teenager growing in Costa Rica, picking beans, thinking, “what are these millions of cherries that I'm picking, then they're juicy, then they slip through my fingers, good for?”

Then later I find out, now they go into a process of getting stripped of the fruit, get the seeds, wash them or ferment them, dry in the sun. Put them in a bag and ship into the United States. That's what we're doing. We're picking beans.

Well, imagine then, you go forward in time, 40 some years, and you find yourself being the one that is brewing those beans, having faith that you will remember them, first, and two represent the legacy of how many other people did exactly the same. What an honor.

DINGMAN: So that's what's important to you about that moment, is that you are the end of a very long process. 

CORTEZ: Yes.

DINGMAN: And that what you're putting in that cup isn't just a cup of coffee. It's the culmination of something. 

CORTEZ: If I don't put attention to the last step of that, you will not remember it. It was just another cup of coffee. It’s just another, it’s so everywhere, in every Circle K, is in every little corner of the universe. What would make it special?

DINGMAN: And what is special to you about a really good cup of coffee for you? 

CORTEZ: Memorability. You drink in that cup of coffee and you're thinking, “I wish I had more,” is a special moment. And I don't know how to explain. It is not an origin, is not a rose. Intentionality is, I am celebrating life by drinking this cup of coffee.

DINGMAN: So you're making me think about, do you know the television writer Brian Koppelman? Have you ever heard of him? He made the show “Billions.” And he does this thing where he calls the first cup of coffee every morning The Royale.

CORTEZ: The Royale, that’s a great name for a drink.

DINGMAN: Because he wants to put a halo around it.

CORTEZ: The most memorable way to describe coffee? Coffee gives you the will to live. It's very short and simple, but I made a practice in the morning not to make any serious decisions about my life until I go through the process of resetting, serving me a cup of coffee, then know that my psyche is going to be in a good place. And I've been there before. It’s rooted, it’s recognizable. That's how I start the day.

So why not put a halo on it? Why not make it a ceremony? Where you’ve been sorting all the things that are laying around. And think about it. As a Catholic mass, you are in the process of doing communion. I think coffee has that intention.

DINGMAN: Let me ask you, Ron. I mean, so far in this conversation, we've been talking about a very mindful, I'll say slow, considered form of coffee consumption, which I'm sure you know, is out of step with the way most Americans drink their coffee. 

Is that difficult? How do you navigate that? 

CORTEZ: Yes. It is a reflection of our culture. We're fast, fast, fast. How is jazz coming along with that? How is it you guys can keep throughout the years knowing then the youth are not jazz prone? We face the same challenge, quality over quantity, and it pushes to be better and better. Otherwise we lose our battle.

So polish ourselves, learn as much as you can, invent, come up with new things, is what we do. And I would not have it any other way. It's what I got. And if you stick to one thing, you eventually become better than a sommelier. You become a sommelier of your own taste, which is very important.

DINGMAN: You know the way you talk about coffee, Ron, it's almost like you're talking about that. It's not just a drink. It's like a way of understanding yourself.

CORTEZ: Yes.

DINGMAN: One of the other reasons I was so struck by how much time you spent with me, that time that I came in to have a cup of coffee that day, is that I did not have the sense in talking with you that you were worried that by spending so much time with me, you might not be able to get another person in there and make them a cup of coffee.

How do you think about that piece of it? 

CORTEZ: Well, I feel very good. Time is so important to me. When you give me the attention of what I've been practicing for my whole entire life is a gift. Like when you drink it and you, and you, and you smile, you think positive about it. It's a gift.

DINGMAN: Yeah. The way you're describing it, it's almost like you're saying that what I did is sort of tantamount to going into a musician's studio and saying, “play me a song you wrote.” 

CORTEZ: Yes.

DINGMAN: This is going to be like, kind of a maybe weird question, but I wanted to ask you. We have a bag here of your coffee. This is the Pura Vida.

CORTEZ: Yes.

DINGMAN: How do you come up with the names?

CORTEZ: The Pura Vida is easy. Pura Vida is a lifestyle. It’s the way that a Costa Rican will say hello, goodbye, how are you doing? It’s like, it’s a multi-use phrase. Means pure life. So this means you want to be reminded of that. Pura Vida is a great thing, man, it's a great expression.

So the philosophy in coffee is whatever you remember. Like one of the things about Cortez is like, oh, there's no hidden secrets. I flaunt it. I put all this stuff, then I do to my coffee, hoping then someday someone who's getting in the business will start thinking, huh, look at this, this guy's doing this stuff. The little riddles that are there for the future. It’s artistry.

DINGMAN: What's one of the little riddles here? 

CORTEZ: You look in the bag.

DINGMAN: OK.

CORTEZ: And the thing says it's air roasted.

DINGMAN: Yes, vintage air roasted.

CORTEZ: Yes. Well, how I learned to roast was putting coffee in a popcorn popper. An Orville Redenbacher, basic $2.99 in Goodwill. It's an air roaster. And we still do it.

Not with the popcorn popper, but we have a giant air roaster, and that's what we do, because we find out that the flavor of coffee improves if you remove particulars from the coffee from roasting as you tumble it.

DINGMAN: Right here again, you're invoking this idea of there's a connection between you and the process. And it's more than that. It's about getting in touch with something deeper.

CORTEZ: Well, it goes back to the roots of a little Costa Rican boy who was picking beans, who maybe at that time said, “what would I give to end up being the one who received these beans and serve it to the customers in a different land?

Just think about it, how weird, how unlikely, for the picker to end up being on the other end and become a coffee scientist. It's an honor. It’s an honor, right? When you have that much, you cannot be anything but generous. Pass it along. This is motivational chemical, coffee.