Undeniably, booze and coffee are two of mankind’s most favored beverage categories. (Well, apart from commune dwellers and health nuts, that is, but we all know they don’t count.) And yet, despite sharing the world’s adoration, booze and coffee tend to be awkward friends when brought together. Think of the aged drunk’s morning beverage of choice, for example: dicey whiskey doused into even dicier coffee. Or consider the so-called espresso martini, which criminally violates both the espresso and the martini. Heinous, all of it, which leaves a person wondering whether booze and coffee ought to keep separate quarters, nice as they are on their own.
Enter Pawtucket-based New Harvest Coffee Roasters, who aim to prove otherwise. A stalwart presence in the state’s local coffee scene for well over a decade, the company recently opened up a café in downtown Providence, in the revamped Arcade building. Rather than do a standard café, though, they added spirits to the mix, hoping the merger of the two might set them apart.
According to the café’s General Manager and longtime roaster, Corey Stroffolino, the concept was something that evolved organically. Opening a café and not just a retail space had been on the company’s agenda already – and then a property manager added an intriguing possibility offhand: why not think about securing a liquor license, too? “At first we thought, what in the world would we do with that?” Corey explained. “And then it seemed so obvious. After coffee, the thing we like most in this world is whiskey.”
The initial concept involved putting coffee and whiskey in the same house, but not necessarily in the same glass. They would choose excellent but unpretentious bottles from distilleries who know what the hell they’re doing, rather than ones with nothing but ad hype to them. Spirits education would feature in, too, to match the company’s similar approach to coffee sales. Themed whiskey flights would help customers gain a foothold in a sometimes daunting and cost-prohibitive arena. “American Craft” brought together whiskeys from Brooklyn and Texan small distilleries, for example, and would give a taste of what’s happening lately among American upstarts.
All that went very well. And then, whiskey and coffee inched closer, and invited other spirits to the party, too. Corey worked with Benjamin Terry, who knows a thing or two about mixed drinks, to develop coffee drinks that make the best of both components, rather than giving one the short shrift. “Coming from the coffee world, I tend to begin from the coffee side,” Corey told me, thinking about the beans and what will bring out their flavor profiles. Benjamin happens to hail more from the bar side, and so begins his thinking there. “And then we somehow meet in the middle, and it works,” he said.
And does it. The Wired Evan, a Manhattan riff named for the owners’ son, blends espresso, bourbon and Cointreau instead of the classic cocktail’s typical vermouth. “Coffee gives it a base note that’s unexpected,” Corey says, and the Cointreau was swapped in to add a freshness that vermouth didn’t. Some drinks make use of a cold brew, such as a spin on the whiskey sour called the Full City Sour, which is the kind of invention that earns experts their cred. When someone turns “it can’t be...” into “it is... and I’ll have another, please,” it’s worth the price of admission.
It can’t hurt that all New Harvest’s mixed drinks begin with superior ingredients, of course. House-roasted beans and damn good whiskey go a long way. But it’s the thoughtful use of those ingredients that impresses most, from the way that the team determined African beans work best for cold brews through trial and error, to their restraint with frippery. More is not more at New Harvest, which is just the antidote we need in the era of sugar-shock jumbo lattes and maximalist cocktails.
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