The Remote Island Barista: Tomás A., Marine Biologist, Azores

By Sophie Renard · 7 min read

Tomás Almeida lives on Flores, the westernmost island in the Azores — a volcanic speck in the mid-Atlantic with a population of around 3,700. The nearest proper cafe is a forty-minute drive over mountain roads. His Arco Viaggio travels with him to whale observation points, research stations, and the small stone house where the Atlantic wind rattles the shutters most nights.

The Edge of Europe

Flores is not a place people end up by accident. It is the kind of island you choose deliberately, usually because you are drawn to isolation, or to the ocean, or to a pace of life that the continent abandoned decades ago. Tomás chose it for the whales. He is a marine biologist with the University of the Azores, and his research focuses on sperm whale communication patterns in the deep waters around the archipelago. He has lived on Flores for six years, in a rented stone cottage on the north coast that was built sometime in the nineteenth century and has been only partially modernized since. The kitchen has a gas stove, a small refrigerator, and roughly one square meter of counter space. There is no dishwasher. The nearest supermarket is in Santa Cruz das Flores, the island's main village, which has one traffic light that Tomás suspects is mostly decorative. Coffee on Flores means one of two things: the strong, dark roast served in every Portuguese cafe and household, brewed in a traditional cafeteira, or instant. Tomás drank cafeteira coffee happily for his first three years on the island. He is Portuguese; this was his baseline. The shift happened during a conference in Lisbon, when a colleague from Norway brought a portable espresso setup to the hotel breakfast room and made him a shot that was, in his words, 'embarrassingly better than anything I had made in years.' He asked questions. He took notes. Two months later, the Viaggio arrived on the weekly ferry.

Coffee at the Observation Point

Tomás's fieldwork takes him to observation stations around the island — elevated points where researchers scan the ocean surface for whale blows using high-powered binoculars. A typical observation session lasts four to six hours. The stations are exposed, often windy, and far from any building. He brings water, food, his optics, and the Viaggio. The Viaggio is a manual lever espresso maker that requires no electricity — just hot water and ground coffee. Tomás heats water on a small camping stove, the same one he uses to make soup during long observation days. He grinds beans by hand using a compact burr grinder that fits in his field bag. The whole setup weighs less than a kilogram and packs into a side pocket. He makes espresso sitting on volcanic rock, watching the Atlantic, waiting for whales. The quality is not what he would get from a full-sized machine with temperature control and a proper portafilter. He knows this and does not care. What the Viaggio produces is real espresso — concentrated, crema-topped, and vastly better than the thermos of drip coffee that his colleagues bring. The ritual of making it has become part of his observation routine. Heat water. Grind beans. Tamp. Press. The physical act of pressing the lever, feeling the resistance of the coffee puck, is satisfying in a way that pressing a button never is. His research assistant, a master's student from São Miguel, initially found the field espresso setup pretentious. After three months of tasting the results, she bought her own Viaggio.

Connection to the Mainland

Living on Flores requires accepting a particular relationship with the rest of the world. The ferry comes once a week in winter, twice in summer. Flights to São Miguel or Lisbon are weather-dependent and canceled frequently. Amazon does not deliver here — or rather, it delivers to a forwarding address in Lisbon, and then you arrange your own onward shipping. Tomás orders his coffee beans from a roaster in Porto, in one-kilogram bags, shipped monthly to his Lisbon forwarding address and then sent to Flores on the ferry. By the time the beans reach him, they are typically two to three weeks past roast date. This is not ideal, and he knows it. But they are still dramatically better than anything available on the island, and the monthly arrival of the coffee package has become an event — a small parcel of mainland life delivered to his door. He opens each bag with genuine anticipation, smells the beans, and brews the first cup within the hour. He describes coffee as one of the threads that connects him to the larger world. On Flores, it is easy to feel very far from everything. The internet is slow. News arrives late. Cultural events are rare. But a good espresso made from freshly ground Porto-roasted beans tastes the same on Flores as it does on the Rua de Santa Catarina. It is a portable piece of civilization — a flavor that does not degrade with distance, even if the logistics of obtaining it are absurd. His mother in Coimbra sends him a care package every few months. It always contains chocolate, dried figs, and a note asking when he is coming home. He always replies that Flores is home now. But the coffee, he admits, is the one thing that makes him occasionally miss the mainland.

Storm Nights and Kitchen Espresso

Winter on Flores is Atlantic winter — horizontal rain, winds that shake the house, and long dark evenings that start at five o'clock. The observation stations close when conditions are too rough, which happens maybe one week in four between November and March. On those evenings, Tomás is home early, the stone cottage groaning in the wind, and he makes espresso in the kitchen. The Viaggio sits on the narrow counter beside the gas stove. He boils water in a kettle, grinds by hand — the sound of the burrs barely audible over the wind outside — and presses a shot into the same small ceramic cup he uses every day. He drinks it at the kitchen table, which is also his desk, covered in papers, a laptop, and whale identification photographs. The espresso on storm nights tastes different to him, though he knows this is psychological. It tastes warmer, more necessary. It is the only hot thing in the house that he makes purely for pleasure rather than sustenance. His dinner is practical — soup, bread, tinned fish. The espresso is the luxury. He has thought about upgrading to a proper electric machine. The cottage has power, though it flickers during storms. A Nano would fit on the counter. But he has concluded that the Viaggio suits the life he has chosen. It is manual, portable, independent of infrastructure, and produces something genuinely good from very little. On an island where self-sufficiency is not a lifestyle choice but a practical necessity, a coffee maker that needs nothing but hot water and human effort feels right. He will keep the Viaggio until it breaks, and then he will buy another one.

Key takeaways