Worth reading
over a cup.

This one is for my son. Read it when you're older and understand why I smile whenever someone puts a Colombian coffee in front of me.

It was the early nineties. No internet. No Instagram. No way of truly knowing who anyone was beyond what they showed you in person — and what they showed us was extraordinary.

I was lucky enough to compete in sports at a level that took me all around the world. Sport has this beautiful way of building friendships across borders, languages, and cultures that nothing else quite replicates. Some of my favourite people on earth were on the Colombian national team, and we became friends for life. I didn't know then — none of us really did — exactly who was behind the curtain funding their travels, their planes, their pilots. It was a different era. You trusted people based on how they treated you, and these people treated us like gold.

After the World Championships, my Australian friend and I decided to stay on and travel with them for a while. What followed was one of the most surreal and unforgettable adventures of my life.

We made our way from Medellín to Cali, and then one afternoon we found ourselves on a private tarmac being ushered toward a sleek jet. The man in charge — El Jefe, as everyone called him — was also the pilot. Before we boarded, he turned to us casually and asked, "You guys hungry?" Within minutes, a limousine pulled up alongside the plane and a woman stepped out carrying a basket — fresh burgers, fries, and juice. Just like that, on a runway, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

There were six of us on the plane. As we crossed over the Panama Canal at altitude, El Jefe banked the plane sideways so we could all look down at it. I nearly lost my burger. We laughed until it hurt.

Our destination was San Andrés — a small, jewel-like island in the Caribbean. Our host, it turned out, owned most of it. We spent our days playing beach volleyball, tearing around in tropical rain on four-wheel motorbikes, and cycling through lush green roads with armed guards riding in 4WD's ahead and behind us. We never asked why. You just didn't. It wasn't fear — it was a kind of unspoken respect for a world that operated by its own rules.

Because here's the thing: these people were, by any measure, deeply generous human beings. They were pumping enormous amounts of money back into their communities — supporting local sport, helping young families, giving kids opportunities that otherwise simply wouldn't have existed. Whatever was unfolding in the world behind the curtain — and in time, things did unravel in a big way — what I witnessed in those days was warmth, generosity, and a genuine love of life.

Their properties were something else — a neighbour kept a real lion. Our friends had around nine hundred horses and a fleet of exotic, very shiny, very fast, very bulletproof cars. And yet, I'll tell you honestly: the moment I laughed the hardest the entire trip was sitting around an open fire one evening playing a simple game of cards. Nothing fancy. Just people, a fire, and cards.

Colombia itself stole my heart in the quieter moments too. The traffic was glorious chaos — nobody followed any rules and somehow everyone arrived exactly where they needed to go, completely calm. I loved that about the place. A country running on its own beautiful logic.

And the coffee. Oh, the coffee. You'd walk past a corner spot — just a little terrace, cement floor, a few red plastic Coca-Cola chairs set out in the sun — and there it would be. Perfect, fresh, black Colombian coffee. A local man, a few teeth fewer than most, would look up and offer you the most genuinely warm smile you've ever seen and say hola. That smile. That coffee. That was Colombia.

My friends had farms, and good coffee was never more than an arm's reach away. Though I'll admit — at eighteen I still preferred a fresh juice! I've caught up since.

The story didn't end well for some of them. When you play in that world, the odds eventually catch up. But I feel nothing but gratitude for having known them and for everything I witnessed. Somehow, being international, being athletes — we existed in a kind of protected bubble. I'm not sure we fully appreciated it at the time.

If you ever find a good Colombian coffee bean, sit with it. Enjoy it slowly. Think of a country full of people who have very little and somehow carry more joy than most people I've met anywhere. Think of a fire, a card game, a limo appearing from nowhere on a runway, and a little island in the Caribbean that felt, for a few days, like it belonged to us.

It's on my list of favourite places on earth. It always will be. Gracias Colombia!

☕ This month's coffee →

I've been to Japan many times, and every single visit has given me something. But of everything I've found there — the temples, the food, the extraordinary precision of ordinary life — one person stands out above all others when it comes to coffee.

I first stumbled across him in Nagano, on one of my early visits. There was a clothing store — the kind of place that stocks expensive jeans you admire more than you wear, beautifully made and displayed with that particular Japanese seriousness about aesthetics. I wandered in, and at the back of the store, tucked away like a small secret, was a man.

Long dark hair. A long goatee to match. A quiet, dark gaze that said I am in my own world and it is a very good world. He didn't speak a word of English — except one. He looked up, tilted his head slightly, and said: "Coffee?"

He had a small machine back there. Not much space, not much fuss. But what came out of it was good. Genuinely, surprisingly, unforgettably good. What struck me even more than the coffee itself was the way he made it. He moved slowly and deliberately, as if time had agreed to wait for him. Every step was considered. There was no performance in it — just a man who genuinely cared about what he was making and for whom.

That was the first visit.

The next time I came back, he was gone from the store. I wasn't surprised — you could tell from the beginning that a clothing shop backroom was never going to hold him for long. He kept evolving. I heard he'd set up a small roastery out near one of the lakes on the edge of town, then eventually he made it to the main street of Nagano itself — a beautiful stretch of road with a grand old temple at one end and cherry blossom trees lining the path, their pink flowers drifting down in the breeze like something from a painting.

His shop was called Forêt. And it was everything he was: minimal, precise, and quietly extraordinary.

A small wooden space. Clean lines. Not many items on the menu — but not many were needed, because everything offered was as close to perfect as coffee can get. With every cup came a small, delicate cake, served without ceremony but with obvious care. You sat, you sipped, you slowed down. The place had a way of doing that to you.

One afternoon I was sitting there enjoying a coffee when I noticed him at his workbench, going through a tray of beans with a pair of tweezers — picking out, one by one, any bean that wasn't quite the right shape. Just removing the imperfect ones. No rush. Completely absorbed. It was one of the most quietly impressive things I've ever seen — this combination of total meticulousness and total calm. He was an artist who had chosen coffee as his medium.

On the walls hung a few simple prints, made by a young local artist he'd commissioned for the space. Nothing loud. Everything considered.

I thought about him for a long time after that trip. Still do, if I'm being honest. He's one of those people who remind you that whatever you do — however small, however ordinary it might seem to the outside world — you can do it with complete devotion. And that devotion changes everything about the experience of receiving it.

If you ever find yourself in Nagano, the temple walk is worth it alone. But if Forêt is still there at the end of that cherry blossom street, go in. Order whatever he suggests. Sit down. Slow down.

Let someone show you what love for a craft actually looks like.

→ @foretcoffee on Instagram

☕ This month's coffee →