Coffee has played an unquestionable role in gastronomy since the nineteenth century. During the twentieth century coffee became a universal product. And in the twenty-first century, coffee was perfected as a product.
During the French Revolution, the perfect coffee was defined as a brew that required romantic virtues: it had to be black as night or as the devil and hot as hell. And eventually, strong as sin, bitter as life, pure as an angel, sweet as love… This sweetness used to come from the sugar that was added.
Today, producers, roasters and baristas have become aware that the coffee bean is a fruit. There is no single, homogenous, highly roasted, black coffee. There are many coffees, with subtle and particular flavours, as varied as the wines of each vineyard area of the world. There are coffees with flavours reminiscent of chocolate, liquorice, spices, and all kinds of fruit. In the same way that there are white, red, rosé, sparkling and sweet wines, there are coffees to make espresso, to infuse, to drink with milk or with ice to make a cold drink, and so on.
Today, producers, roasters, baristas and consumers have become aware that paying a fair price for coffee brings a social benefit and protects plantations in balance with nature. This is the movement for specialty coffee. In the counties of Girona in particular, specialty coffee has seduced cyclists and elite athletes, winners of the Giro and stages of the Tour, runners in great teams, and medal winners at the Olympic Games and world championships.
Coffee with the 2023-2024 Girona Excel·lent seal
96 Barista Pro Premium Grade
Cafès Cornellà, a company founded in 1920 in Girona, has developed the Barista Pro range, a series of coffees with 100% Arabica beans specially roasted to make an espresso full of nuances. With a dense body, a smooth fine bubble crema, reddish, with elegant lines of brindle tone, fragrant and floral notes of cocoa and liquorice, and a touch of acidity. The 96 is a blend of coffees with the best provenance: Brazil Bourbon, Honduras SHG, Ethiopia Sidamo, Guatemala Volcán de Oro and Colombia Supremo.
Company: Pere Cornellà, SAU
Mahogany Brazil Fazenda Sertão filter coffee
Cafès Cornellà was one of the first coffee companies to create a premium line. So, in 1991, when the gourmet coffee market was still very much in its infancy, they launched the Mahogany brand. In the century of specialty coffee, in which the provenance of the product is fundamental and roasting is a statement of intent, Mahogany has found its market niche. This Mahogany Specialty Coffee Brazil Fazenda Sertão for filter starts from a Bourbon Amarelo green coffee, created by José Isidro Pereira and his family. It is a balanced and sweet coffee, light-bodied, with a pleasant moderate acidity, and evident notes of fruit and chocolate.
Company: Pere Cornellà, SAU
Medicinal herbs
The ancestral fondness of this region for medicinal herbs, including the aromatics, ideal for perfuming a dish or for making a relaxing infusion, has led to the appearance of numerous ethnobotanical books and studies. We have always been keen on ethnobotany, even before we found out that there was a multidisciplinary science that connects scientific and folk knowledge, and studies all the possible links between popular culture, religion, history, botany, phytotherapy (pharmacy), cooking, gastronomy and language (the vernacular names of vegetables and the dialectal variants).
Medicinal herbs are at the base of ratafia and many other spirits and liqueurs, though their use is not restricted to alcoholic beverages or drinks for healing purposes but also extends to herbal teas. However, herbal teas are very often offered for their well-known pharmaceutical properties and as an alternative to coffee.
Herbal teas or infused waters are usually made from a single species of plant – chamomile, mint, lime blossom, lemon verbena – but they are also made increasingly from creative mixtures, despite the fact that their digestive or relaxing properties are generally the key factor, since they are designed for the sobretaula, the time after a meal, to which, as everyone knows, Mediterranean people are addicted.
Herbs have always been used for cooking, mixtures of herbs that each family keeps secret, for grandmother’s meat sauce for pasta, the Sunday roast or the dishes eaten at local festivals.
Medicinal herbs with the 2023-2024 Girona Excel·lent seal
Alma chamomile tea
Chamomile is the most widely drunk herbal tea, especially in the world of hospitality. From the Alma chamomile, certified organically, you get an infusion of intense and delicate floral flavour, slightly sweet, ideal to end the heaviest of meals. Coffee Center, a company that has specialised for more than 30 years in the production and distribution of coffees and herbal teas, emphasises the medicinal, especially digestive, properties of its chamomile.
Company: Coffee Center, SL
Menta del Pirineu
TeGust, an innovative company in the world of herbal teas, was established in 2014 in La Bisbal d’Empordà. Menta del Pirineu is prepared exclusively with Pyrenean mint leaves, crushed and packaged in biodegradable single-dose pyramid sachets of one-and-a-half grams. If it is infused in 200 or 250 ml of water at 98 ºC for four minutes, the burst of mentholated aromas is superb; if it is infused for a longer time, a bitter flavour emerges.
Company: TeGust Nature, SL
Empordà organic lemon verbena tea
This lemon verbena tea from TeGust Nature is citrussy and refreshing, with a very elegant green colour. It comes from the Parc de les Olors near Castell beach, in Palamós, where all the precepts of organic farming are followed. TeGust encourages its suppliers from the Parcs de les Olors de Catalunya network to recover traditional species and increase biodiversity in the agricultural environment.
Company: TeGust Nature, SL
Digest Power
TeGust Nature has created this herbal blend as a healthy post-meal digestif. Digest Power contains lemon verbena, fennel, chamomile, marjoram and stevia leaf from the Parcs de les Olors de Catalunya network, which is made up of 20 parks dedicated to the cultivation and production of products derived from aromatic, culinary and medicinal plants. Floral, aniseed and citrussy, Digest Power contains plants which are good for digestion, to which stevia has been added, so there is no need to add any sweetener to the infusion.
Company: TeGust Nature, SL
Herb mixture for meat and pasta
Emporarom, Aromes de l’Empordà, is a company established in 2018 from the union of different producers of aromatic and medicinal plants to market medicinal herbs grown in the Empordà region. Farmers Guillem Castañé and Pere Coll produce all the plants in their fields in L’Escala, Les Olives, Sant Sadurní de l’Heura and La Tallada. In addition, at Mas Sastruc, in L’Escala, they have the Camp de les Aromes, where there are activities based on medicinal and aromatic plants. This mixture for meat and pasta is a selection of organic Mediterranean plants and herbs that give a special touch to a red meat or pasta dishes, the result of the collaboration with the Artisan Butchers and Butchers Guild of the counties of Girona.
Company: Emporion, SL
