"It's Yuban."

Harry Dean Stanton, David Lynch, The Coffee That Won The West

I reliably click a heart on pretty much anything featuring Harry Dean Stanton, David Lynch, or people over the age of seventy smoking cigarettes, so I’m not surprised that the algorithm regularly tosses some version of the above clip over my transom.

Given how many times I’ve seen the clip and the documentary it’s from (Partly Fiction, Sophie Huber, 2012), I am surprised that my most recent viewing was the first time I’d picked up on Harry muttering “It’s Yuban” while Lynch is complimenting the coffee.

I had no idea what the hell Yuban coffee was, so I did a little digging before I placed my order.

The Yuban brand is responsible for some classic American advertising (memorably parodied in Airplane):

And if Jim’s second cup and the endorsement of Harry Dean Stanton and David Lynch isn’t enough for you, listen to this testimonial from Cousin Eddie in Vegas Vacation: “Yuban Coffee. You know you can sprinkle that stuff on anything? Ice cream, mashed potatoes, or just eat it right out of the can for a quick pick-me-up.”

“Harry, I’m gonna tell ya.”

To get to Yuban, you have to start with Arbuckle’s. Here’s a quick history lesson.

Until sometime around the end of the Civil War, coffee in America was sold green. Meaning you needed to roast it yourself in a wood stove or a campfire skillet. After Jim Folger set up shop in San Francisco, supplying pre-roasted coffee to gold mining camps, John Arbuckle followed suit in Texas and the Southwest, with a target market of chuckwagon cooks.

Arbuckle’s was first roasted coffee to be packaged in one-pound bags. The bags—each containing a single peppermint stick—were then shipped in wooden crates to the kind of places that had a lot of blacksmiths and bordellos and saloons with swinging doors. In short order, Arbuckle’s Ariosa blend became the original cowboy coffee, eventually adopting the motto: “The Coffee That Won The West.”

John Arbuckle later developed his own personal blend of coffee to give as Christmas gifts. He called it Yuban (a weird abbreviation of Yuletide Banquet) and the brand continued on after the original Arbuckle’s company disbanded sometime in the thirties.

Somewhere along the line, Arbuckle’s was rebooted. Currently operating out of Tucson, Arizona, it’s gotten the full retro branding treatment, with messaging that lays it on a little thick: “Arbuckle’s Coffee is the choice of confident, rugged men, worthy of honor and respect, who live by the code of the west. It’s also preferred by strong, ambitious women who are loved and looked up to by their families.” It’s also very expensive.

I prefer the fair-and-square vibe of the Yuban website, which lists a headquarters in Northfield, Illinois and states a dedication to time-honored roasting traditions and core company values including quality, integrity, and customer satisfaction. Plus, you can buy two pounds of the stuff for less than ten bucks. What a steal!

“Nice flavor.”

So how is it?

When I presented it to my girlfriend Lauren, in its brown plastic tub with a flavor-lock lid, she flatly dismissed it as “coot coffee.”

I brewed a pot and insisted she try it with me anyway. At the first sip, her eyebrows went up a little. It’s good stuff.

I’ve accepted that I feel the same way about coffee as I do about beer. I can appreciate Heady Topper or Treehouse Green, but day to day I prefer what made Milwaukee famous. I’ve always had a secret fondness for Folger’s and Maxwell House. Bustelo was my go-to for years but I no longer have the gastrointestinal fortitude to drink it daily. Going forward, I believe I’ll stick with Yuban.

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On the Harry Dean Stanton tip, now is a good time to re-plug a piece I wrote for Crimereads last year. Looking it over again, it makes me want to repeat the deep-dive I did into the HDS canon while I was writing it.

https://crimereads.com/harry-dean-stanton-is-the-hero-of-every-noir/

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