Cultivated Epicures Sample the Heady Essences of a Beloved Brackish Beverage

My daddy always told me not to slurp. But slurping is the only way to really savor coffee--a delicious little fact I learned at a coffee tasting Tuesday.

Like wine tastings, coffee tastings have their own rituals. Each of the 15 guests who gathered at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’s headquarters on La Cienega Boulevard were given four glasses containing ground coffee. We started by smelling the dry grounds, which can have sweet, salty, even floral characteristics.

Then, a server came around to fill our glasses with hot water, upon which the grounds immediately rose to the top. Steeping mimics the effect of making coffee with a French press, according to the company’s director of green coffee (what a title), Jay Isais. Coffee has more body when prepared this way, since paper filters can absorb the natural oils in the coffee, he added.

After skimming the grounds off the top of each glass of swamp-like mush (a painstaking task I thank God I don’t have to wake up to every morning), it was time to taste. “Slurps” sailed through the room as we took into our mouths spoonfuls of coffee and air, trying to summon our tongues to discern acidity and viscosity.

Being dilettantes, our observations were less than stellar. “Tastes sweet,” one man surmised of sample No. 2. “Bitter,” I countered. Genius.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to explain coffee, especially to laypeople, who are usually not in touch with their taste buds, Isais said. One person’s bitter could be another person’s sweet. And since there’s no real coffee science, the industry is very much driven by the strength of opinions, he said.

Sure enough, after Isais said the coffee that I had dismissed as bitter was actually from Yemen and the most different of the bunch, I had to agree. It wasn’t bitter I was tasting at all. It was fruity and winey, and I liked it. How can I ever go back to the old grind?

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Angels Attic, the dollhouse museum located in the remarkably dollhouse-like Queen Anne Victorian near 4th Street and Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, hosted its annual holiday tea Wednesday.

In the sea of Christmas sweaters and wreath-shaped brooches, I spotted Eleanor LaVove, who founded the museum in 1984 with Jackie McMahan. She said the house is getting ready to move for the second time in its 105-year history. (It was built in 1895 on the corner of what is now 5th Street and Wilshire Boulevard and moved to its present spot in 1924.)

After the first of the year, every floorboard and fixture will be transferred to Heritage Square on Santa Monica’s Main Street, LaVove said, adding that the museum hopes to reopen in the spring. Of course, the staff has quite a bit of work to do before then, what with more than 60 dollhouses and their assorted accouterments to pack.

“Fortunately, these are glued down,” LaVove said, pointing to hundreds of thimble-sized porcelain dolls, buggies and basinets inside a miniature doll shop named “Grandma’s Treasures.”

“Unfortunately, these are not,” she said, motioning toward a teensie trove of thousands of little lace doilies, puny pitchers and minute mirrors in the “Spinning Wheel Antiques Shop.”

Yikes!