Client Profile: J.T. Ficociello (pt.1)

https://enladiaspora.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-american-dream-craft-beer-and.html

It was tremendously good for the soul to find myself back in Puerto Viejo, after two years. I was witness to strange omens, and uncommonly fortunate in the acquaintances I made this go-round. Having been won over by the convenience of airbnb, and captivated by the outright bizarre randomness which typically embodies an airbnb residency, I had booked the weekend at Kaya's Place, on the periphery of town, with no particular expectation, save that I would likely see something I hadn't seen before.

Being that I venture to Costa Rica in search of... opportunity?... and no longer merely as a dollar-hemorrhaging tourist, it has become particularly interesting to me when I meet other estadounidenses who seek personal renewal; those few of us willing to undergo a reboot of the 'American Dream' on singular terms, devoid of the taint of propaganda. And so it was that I met J.T., ex-pat of 11 years, from Vermont, and the affable proprietor of Kaya's Place.

J.T. has been brewing since he was 14-years-old. Initial tutelage in the craft of beer-making began by virtue of his older friends, who themselves had begun their own fermentation experiments. Though not old enough to drink, J.T. was old enough to buy ingredients. And certainly, the social capital that arrived at the rampant whispering amongst his peers, 'Hey! J.T.'s got his own beer!', must have paid awesome dividends for the New England teenager. The hobby became the passion. Fast forward to 2004: Scion of an enterprising family, poised to eventually inherit their company, and no doubt, millions of dollars, J.T. walked away from it all (save for his marriage, which, even after a heroic effort on her part, she unfortunately walked away from him.)

~ There's something about hitting thirty which, I think for men in particular, prompts a sober reassessment of life choices ~

[ My own honest appraisal of the ground upon which I stood at thirty led me to essentially walk away from a 50% ownership stake in a digital recording studio in San Diego; it led me to East Texas - the historical incubator of my matrilineal ancestors - where I went back to college,  and subsequently found a much more hospitable economic landscape, not to mention the fresh start which would become exponentially harder to initiate the longer I waited, the older I became. ]

J.T.'s 'career path', if you will (or perhaps it is more accurate to call it a profile in self-preservation), brought him to the warm embrace of the Caribbean. To have lived the life laid at his feet, to have fulfilled those basest of expectations, this no doubt would have been easier, as it would be for anyone. Is it a condition of being 'well-adjusted' to constantly feel like you want to leap out of your own skin for lack of any meaningful reminder that you're actually alive? As I interviewed him, and as J.T. plied me with his concoctions, we both more or less arrived at the consensus that 'The American Dream', as sold to us through endless imagery, through the insipid assurances of everyone from high school guidance counselors to Presidents, has nothing to do whatsoever with actually being happy, and everything to do with the compulsion to consume: our time, and all of its tangible derivatives.

 If I may be unequivocal, the 'American Dream' is simply the pursuit of passion, and the journey to wherever it takes you in life - something Americans used to be heroic at. Some of us still are. "Passion is everything," J.T. agreed with me.

J.T. followed his passion for beer making to one of the loveliest places on Earth. And so it was that I discovered the varieties which Bribri Springs Brewery has to offer: a selection of artesanales full of creativity, each one more different from the next. (Disclaimer: though I love beer, I am not a beer critic.) At first glance, they all appeared as one might expect beer to look like. Of particular note was (I believe) the third variety which I tried. Called Hibiscus Mango Basi, this was no beer at all - derived from sugar cane, it is the undistilled precursor to rum. It sits at about 12% alcohol content, if memory serves. It was a unique pleasure, and I'm curious to try other varieties of Basi, now that I know what to ask for. The most experimental of the five would have to be the Sundown Brown, which contains maple notes, as well as a not-even-subtle bacon motif. (Yes, bacon.) As revolting as other food amalgams have been, such as bacon-flavored ice cream, or soda, Sundown was surprisingly good - I can definitely envision this being a seasonal delight around Thanksgiving time.

Certainly the most relevant of the five samples would be the chocolate porter, or Big Choco, as it's formally known. This is significant for the simple fact that the chocolate is local, bought from the Bribri, the indigenous people who inhabit the Limón province. The cacao farmers, as J.T. related to me, suffered a terrible blight beginning in the late 1970's due to an invasive fungus, Moniliophthora roreri, which destroyed about 80% of Costa Rica's output of cacao beans. The official narrative is that this amargo misterio was something entirely random, a misfortune that was the inevitable result of nature, and of commercial farming. But the Bribri tell a much darker story. The eyewitnesses paint a picture of airplanes dumping bags of the fungus onto the cacao fields from above - deliberate acts of eco-terrorism carried out by contractors on the payroll of U.S. multinationals, with the goal of forcing the farmers to burn their fields and transition to banana plantation. Nowhere in the Costa Rican National Library, nor in any of the news archives, is there even a hint of this. Nor was John Perkins, author of the indispensable Confessions of an Economic Hitman, and expert on corporate-sponsored terrorism, able to confirm this bit of history when I asked him via email. 

After an afternoon of digging, and hitting mostly dead ends, I did however find this one article, which reported on the legal action against Standard Fruit for dumping - and this is ironic - fungicide into the ecosystem. Whether or not this same multinational is definitively responsible for the cacao plague is beyond the scope of this posting. I am inclined to believe that there is truth to the allegations, as there is scientific evidence that suggests that the particular strain of M. roreri which destroyed Costa Rica's cacao industry is genetically identical to varieties found in Ecuador; that the presence north of Panama is not the result of natural selection. Whether there is also truth in the notion that modern commercial farming played an innocent part in the devastation, we may never know. My next visit to Costa Rica will definitely include another trip to the Limón region, as this allegation is truly alarming to me, and deserving of more investigation. I'm very grateful to J.T. for telling the story of the Bribri, and for making such a noble effort to bring not only understanding, but healing between two disparate worlds - the indigenous, and the European - bundled together paradoxically within a distinct identity; a people who share a regional history that is tragic, at times brutal, but also triumphant: Costa Rica, and that which her people have built in a half-millenium of coexistence, has become the jewel of Central America.~"I'm telling the history through the beers I brew." - J.T. Ficociello ~

Friday, June 12, 2015

October, 2025 UPDATE: JT and I have reconnected after more than a decade and are collaborating on his real estate projects. For more information, please visit www.tejanosproperties.com