A Journey to the Source of the Ultimate Cup of Java : Visit to an Indonesian coffee plantation adds spice to strong, sweet native brew. : news

There’s nothing like sipping a cup of java in Java. And it tastes even better when your own houseboy brews it. Better still, if you drink it on the veranda of your bungalow following a bracing morning walk under canopies of rubber trees, past glorious stands of tropical flowers and through the streets of a little village where people rush out to say “Selamat pagi”-- good morning--in Indonesian.

This is life on Kaliklatak, a coffee plantation in East Java. Here the coffee is strong, rich, mellow and sweet . . . just the way Indonesians like it.

You’d expect a great cup at its source, but the coffee is wonderful everywhere in Indonesia, whether you drink it--as I did in July--at a street stall in the Javanese city of Yogyakarta; on a Garuda Indonesia Airways flight from Biak Island to Bali; at an exotic dinner in Joyukusuman Palace in Yogyakarta or at a fisherman’s shack on a crowded Balinese beach. In three weeks of traveling in Java and Bali, I never had a bad cup, but none of it was good to the last drop. That’s because Indonesians grind their coffee to a powder, then combine it with boiling water, sugar or condensed milk. As the mixture stands, the grounds settle to the bottom forming a thick dark sludge--which you leave in the cup--like Turkish coffee.

It’s almost impossible to find such coffee in the United States. Most of the Indonesian product that is shipped to the United States is integrated into blends and instant coffee. Only the premium grades are sold pure. The best place to get the coffee powder ( bubuk ) is in Indonesia, where you’ll find packets at colorful outdoor markets, coffee outlets, supermarkets and at major airports in coffee-producing regions. That alone would be worth the trip. But then there the food, the music, the art, the fabric, the crafts . . .

But don’t try to buy coffee at Kaliklatak. The plantation is so non-commercial that even guests can’t purchase the spices, cocoa and coffee produced there. (Their crops are transported to buyers from Surabaya, the capital of East Java.) But what you can do is tour the estate and learn how coffee is grown and processed.

Located on the forested slopes of 9,000-foot Mt. Merapi, Kaliklatak is the largest privately owned coffee plantation in Java. Fine gardens and a cool, park-like setting make it a pleasant place to relax. A few bungalows are available for guests, most of whom are Dutch who remain inveterate tourists in the country they once ruled.

Arriving in Java at the end of the 1500s, Dutch traders who explored the area gradually expanded control until by the late 1700s, they ruled most of what we now think of as Indonesia. It was conquered by Japan during World War II but after the Japanese surrender in 1945, Indonesia claimed independence. It took another four years, however, before the Dutch officially recognized Indonesia’s independence.

Although relations between the Indonesians and their colonial rulers were often bitter, there’s still considerable interchange. You’ll see old Dutch buildings and taste Dutch specialties such as the molded cookie, speculaas, which is now made in Jakarta under license of the Verkade company of The Netherlands. (I snacked on boxes of these as I toured, and bought tiny bottles of speculaas spices in supermarkets in the as yet unfulfilled hope that I could make the cookies at home). The only other guests at Kaliklatak during my stay were touring Hollanders.

I booked a room at the plantation and hired a car for the trip through a travel agency in Bali’s capital of Denpasar. The drive took me past splendid uninhabited beaches in West Bali and briefly through a national park where monkeys gather along the road in hope of a snack. At Gilimanuk, I boarded the vehicular ferry that crosses the Bali Strait to Banyuwangi in East Java. From that town, I bounced along rough, unpaved roads rising through groves of tall rubber trees to the plantation gates.

When I arrived, Sarmono, the houseboy, was waiting at a bungalow still higher up the hill. My quarters consisted of a sitting room, a bedroom and a bathroom that was half Western and half Indonesian. For a shower, I rinsed with water scooped from a tiled tank, soaped up and rinsed again. Sarmono promised to heat the water, and I got one tepid scoopful, then resigned myself to minimal washes in shiveringly cold mountain water. We were so isolated that the only source of power was the estate’s generator. The lights went on at 5 p.m. and switched off at 11, making a flashlight a necessity.

Sarmono brought meals to my room, setting them out on a table covered with a hand embroidered cloth. Lunch required several trips because there was so much to eat. The spread included soto ayam (chicken soup), beef in sweet-tasting coconut sauce, chicken in another sweet sauce (the Javanese love sugary flavors); a plate of delicious, chewy corn fritters; two sayurs (vegetable dishes)--one made with chayote and the other with cabbage--a red vacuum jug filled with rice; a sweet-sour cucumber relish and two sambals-- spicy condiments with which to season the food. Dessert was agar agar pudding in layers of chocolate and coconut. “Semua enak” (It’s all delicious), I said to Sarmono, rinsing my hands in a finger bowl containing purple blossoms.

Breakfasts were generous, too: freshly squeezed orange juice, a soft-boiled egg, beef sausages, bread, toast, cinnamon cake and--my favorite touch--chocolate shot sprinkled over toast and bread in the Dutch tradition.

All this and my coffee plantation stay was a modest $30 per night and lunch was $5.50, plus tax, service and a small fee for eating in my room. Dinner was the same, but I arrived too late for that and instead was invited to a birthday party for the estate manager where we feasted on fried noodles, yellow rice, grilled chicken and steamed sponge cake and toast with tea, rather than coffee.

Plantation tours are based on a minimum of two people and cost $6 each. And so on a drizzly morning, my guide and I bounced through the lush growth, stopping to see how rubber trees are tapped, examining the huge pods in which cocoa beans grow, sniffing the aroma of cloves drying in an estate village, examining vanilla vines and viewing coffee on the branch.

I saw and smelled the white blossoms as fragrant as jasmine that precede the formation of the coffee berries. It takes five months for the coffee shrub to progress from the flowering stage to green, yellow and then bright red berries ready for picking. The harvest goes to a processing plant on the property where the beans are fermented, cleaned, roasted and peeled. I watched women wearing sarongs and bright blouses sort the beans by hand for size and color for local sale and, for the finest beans only, export. Lower grades are sold locally or distributed to plantation workers. Only a few women were on hand when I walked through the cavernous, dark building where the coffee is processed. They laughed and chattered as I took their picture, but I wondered how it felt to work at this painstaking task seven hours a day.

In the midst of my tour, we stopped high on a windy view platform for a coffee break accompanied by sawut, a cassava cake topped with palm sugar and coconut and wrapped in a banana leaf, and onde onde, a chewy pastry filled with coconut and sugar.

Java may be a synonym for coffee, but many Indonesians say the finest comes from Bali. Very little of this coffee is exported, but you can buy it readily there. On this island, coffee is grown primarily by small farmers rather than on large estates and goes to central processing plants. You’ll see trees along the roadside occasionally, and I climbed into one thicket to photograph the pale blossoms, so delicate they fade in a day.

Balinese grow and roast coffee for their own use, too, just as they pluck coconuts, bananas, mangoes and other fruit from their yards. I was lucky enough to taste home-grown coffee on several occasions.

One of the best cups, extraordinarily rich and full flavored, was served at a family compound in Payangan, a village near the town of Ubud. There I sat with friends on the steps of a local woman’s cottage and sipped her brew while gazing out at the family’s Hindu temple nearby. My hostess boiled the water over a wood fire on a tiny hearth in the small outbuilding that functioned as the kitchen. She then stirred the water into coffee powder and sugar and presented it with homemade caramel cake. I was delighted when she gave me a little sack of the powder to take home.

On a rainy afternoon at another time outside Payangan, I climbed with friends high onto property so isolated that we could not get there by road. Slipping and sliding over the damp ground, we finally reached a tiled pavilion, led onward by exotic, tinkling sounds. Our host, an American, had arranged for a troupe of musicians to play the unusual gamelan slundeng for his sunset reception. The instruments, which resembled small xylophones, had keys of sturdy iron, but they produced angelic sounds.

Instead of cocktails, we drank coffee grown on the property. And we enjoyed it more than an icy aperitif because evenings can be chilly at higher elevations during Balinese winter, the time when I was there. A turbaned servant knelt on the floor of a small cottage to pour hot water from a vacuum bottle into glasses of coffee powder and sugar. The musicians joined us in our coffee break and sampled what was, for them, an unfamiliar treat--American style carrot cake, brought by motorcycle from a restaurant in Ubud.

Balinese families sometimes turn their homes into budget lodgings, including breakfast--and coffee--in the room rate. At one such lodging I visited, a bouquet of orchids and a welcoming pot of delicious, sweet, strong coffee sat on the veranda of the room assigned to me at a small compound almost hidden on a side street in Ubud. It was a charming way to greet a tired traveler.

And for a pick-me-up after a hard day of touring, I ordered a tall tumbler of invigorating coffee mixed with arak, a fiery liquor that the Balinese distill from rice wine or palm wine. I had that at Satri’s Warung, a small restaurant just off Monkey Forest Road, the main shopping street of Ubud.

Another good warm-up is Javanese kopi jahe- coffee spiced with ginger (jahe). This unusual brew was on the menu at a guest house on the grounds of the immense Buddhist monument, Borobudur, in Central Java. Sadly, the hotel had none on hand, so I drank ordinary, gingerless coffee as I watched dawn break over the stupas in the distance. Imagine my surprise to find that this rare treat was nothing more than flavored instant coffee granules spiked with ginger. I found a jar a week later in a supermarket in Banyuwangi, the town near Kaliklatak.

But the finest coffee in all Indonesia is virtually impossible to obtain. It’s the legendary coffee luak. Luak is Indonesian for civet cat, an animal that feasts on coffee beans but cannot digest them so the beans pass through intact. The cat may suffer, but the beans are said to benefit greatly by the internal “processing”. Myth? Maybe so, but I did meet one person who claimed to have tasted the rare brew. I, however, will leave that experience for another trip.

GUIDEBOOK

Finding Java in Java and Bali

Where to stay and eat: For reservations at Kaliklatak, write to Wisata Irdjen, Kaliklatak Plantation, P.O. Box 9, Banyuwangi, Jawa Timur, Indonesia; telephone 011-62-0333-41011, line 323. You can also book space there through Tedjo Express, an Indonesian-owned travel agency with an office at 3457 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 203, Los Angeles 90010; telephone (213) 387-3838. I arranged my trip through Tedjo’s office in Bali. The address is Jalan W.R. Supratman No. 24, Denpasar, Bali; telephone 011-62-361-38582 or 38583.

The restaurant Satri’s Warung is located on Gang Arjuna, just off Monkey Forest Road in Ubud.

Although I did not stay there, another coffee plantation called Kalisat Plantation in East Java has accommodations at Arabica Home Stay. For further information, contact the plantation office in Jember: PT Perkebunan XXXVI, P.O. Box 10, Jember, Indonesia.

Where to buy coffee in Indonesia: Pioneer Supermarket, Jalan M.H. Thamrin No. 19, Banyuwangi, East Java. This is where I bought Kopi Jahe-Mira brand instant ginger coffee.

Toko Kopi Warung Tinggi, Jalan Hayam Wuruk No. 56 and 57, Jakarta, Java. Toko Kopi means coffee shop, and this one stocks a wide selection of Indonesian coffees.

Toko Kopi Bhineka Jaya, Jalan Gajah Mada 20, Denpasar, Bali. This shop, located near the large city market, also carries a variety of coffees. I recommend the Butterfly Globe brand produced by P.T. Putra Bhineka Perkasa. The Indonesian name that appears on the label is “Kopi Bali, Kupu Kupu Bola Dunia.” Bhineka Jaya also sells premium Toraja coffee from Sulawesi for about $10 a pound.