Harsh or delicious –who is to say?

Harsh or delicious –who is to say?  I have a coffee problem.  The problem is that I like lots of kinds of coffee and my wife does not.  She loves dark roasts including the ones from a very large coffee company with a famous name that most coffee snobs would turn their collective noses up at.  She does not like light roasts including the ones that are so trendy right now and are all the rage. No matter who the roaster is.  


I understand both sides of the dark versus light debate.  Dark roasts that are well done and are well shy of burning are yummy if only because the roast tastes good.  On the other hand one of the reasons that light roasts have been so trendy is that coffee purists recognize that if you roast the coffee light you can detect the subtle differences between the beans from one region to another and perhaps even one farm to another that the coffee was made out of and that some of those subtleties are lost when you roast past a certain point.  


I respect that tremendously, but I also understand that the first function of coffee should be to taste good and this should be a priority over transparency of origin in my book.  I was surprised to realize that there are some who would argue the other way around – that taste is only second to transparency and that they would rather taste the origins of the beans even if it meant they did not like the taste as much!


My issue is that I like to have both kinds of coffee and if push comes to shove I would rather have coffees that run on the light to medium side, since those taste the best to me whereas my wife never wants light roasts and is only okay with an occasional medium roast.  Alas it seems like I may need another grinder!  (Ah, but there is a flaw with that too, which is that we do not have the counter space for a second grinder even if they were given away for free, which they usually are not).