Geert Lohgman is known - amongst a limited circle of coffee aficionados - as one of the world's finest coffee-industry analysts. No matter how much refined and acute he was, he basically ceased to exist - digitally speaking - despite his moment of reknown, a couple of years ago.
This epitaph is for him.
In 2012 I published a short article about Geert Lohgman - read it here, and you will understand what kind of unique persona Geert was...
On his public outings, Geert read like a top-quality food-industry analyst - most probably he was one. His visions about coffee made it as far as Qwetta, Chicago, or Milan. And God knows now if they made sense.
It turns out that most of the magazines that had published an article on coffee featuring Geert (as prominent testimonial) do not actually feature that article any more. Geert was erased from their data base, indeed. If you Google him (today) you just get my old article, and a six more. 7 hits only. Down from 277. In digital words, Geert sadly left this earth. So, this is time for mourning.
I have not forgot him, none of us has. Geert, he was our man.
My imagination tells me he was born in 1955. For sure, he knew a lot about coffee. From Brecht up to Delfzijl, he knew all the best cafeterias. He surely knew where to get a good ristretto. He lived for coffee and loved coffee - actually, he drank a lot of it. He was one of us.
Geert lived in Amsterdam, I am told, but he was always where or when you needed him to be. He will be missed. Perhaps by his wife and children, or his husband, or grandmother, I am not totally sure. Certainly by all of us coffee lovers, he will be sadly missed.
Not to his least, he will be remembered as the first man to predict that Douwe Egberts would become the no. 2 coffee roaster in the world. It is sad that he did not (digitally) make it to see his dream come true, when DE announced the news, last May 7th. Yet, yes: Douwe Egberts has become no. 2 in the world of coffee, changing its name into Jacobs Douwe Egberts. And (to date) it has not been able to challenge, to use Balochistan Online's nomenclature, "no. 1 of the Universe", i.e. the Nestlè company. Even in this tiny detail, Geert was not mistaken. He was a perfectionist.
Geert, by all means, had seen it right. As sure as the river runs, we'll all going to miss him.
LDM © 10 - May - 2014