Hi there… my name Is Craig and I’m a (coffee) cupaholic

Hi there… my name Is Craig and I’m a cupaholic…

Not many people know of my cup fetish as it’s not something a man in his mid-thirties would usually own up to… but I think the time has finally come for me to be honest with you all!

So here goes…It soon started after I had fallen in love with Coffee; one day while drinking from a particularly horrible specimen (you know the kind) I realised that I wasn’t enjoying the coffee I was drinking as much as I should or could!  Looking at the ugly, but functional, cup in my hand I recognised that it was the cup that was putting a dampener on this particularly good coffee and somehow I needed to remedy this.  So my eternal search for a good coffee cup began… and my cup fetish started.

 At the start it was a very basic obsession.   I was living at home with my folks and as you can possibly  imagine their cup collection was terrible…  every time I lovingly made my coffee using my hand grinder and stale Gloria gene beans (ah bless), I had to drink it out of my ‘favourite’ cup otherwise It just would not taste right.

As I progressed with my love of coffee I also progressed with my new obsession of cups! Cups became so important that I would avoid cafes that served coffee in the wrong receptacle (If I’m honest I still do this…) I believe if people can’t put the effort into choosing good cups it probably doesn’t bode well for the coffee quality, completely irrational I know!

After buying my first proper espresso machine I quickly realised I needed proper cups.  I scoured the internet and finally decided on the lovely 'Danesi Caffe' cups, 3 different sizes, espresso, americano and cappuccino.  I spent days making espresso and cappuccinos just to see what they looked and tasted like in these ‘amazing’ new cups.

My obsession with cups has even led to marriage (lucky girl!). I met my now wife about 6 years ago and it was soon after we met that she headed off to Italy for a few days with work. On this trip she visited the Ferrari car museum and factory where she had an espresso. She tried to buy the cup but they weren’t on sale… there she was sitting there looking at this small little cup and thinking how much her then ‘new’ boyfriend would love it, she even took a photo of it and sent it to me…she mentioned it to a colleague how much she wanted the cup and even though, as I mentioned previously the cups weren’t for sale, she still somehow managed to ‘acquire’ a Ferrari Factory espresso cup (she maintains that her colleague presented it to her later!... I’m not so sure!!!) That cup, one of the first of many that she has since given me, is now one of my favourite cups and it was after this that I knew that she was not only a keeper but also a kleptomaniac….

My latest craze is buying antique cups, I know most were originally tea cups but in my head, once coffee goes into them they become coffee cups. I have managed to get my hands on some beautiful old cups and my most recent purchase turned out to be a little gem.  While out in Enniskerry on a recent coffee trip I popped into a local antique shop; from across the shop I spotted a stunning and unusual old cup.  I really wanted it… with my best poker face on I casually asked how much, the old man behind the counter said “I’ll take a tenner”, “will you accept €8”, we shook hands,  the deal was done.

When I got home I began to look at the markings on the base of the cup and saucer, it’s like a little puzzle waiting to be solved, different letters, shapes, colours tell you different things… so from my research I discovered I had bought a rust colour ’jungle print’ pattern on ‘daisy shape’ cup and saucer from 1890 made by Shelley Folely Wileman, which are selling for between €40 - €60 on Ebay. My coffee cup obsession has now become an investment which is a fantastic justification for buying more cups.

So, does the right cup affect the taste of the coffee? I absolutely believe it does; maybe not for any physical reasons but for me the cup is as important as the beans, the grind, the water temperature, the water quality, the barista, the café … the cup is an essential piece of the jigsaw which creates the perfect coffee experience and for me the final piece in the puzzle.