Jasmine, citrus blossoms, tropical fruit: This cup is Gesha all the way; like sipping a bouquet of flowers! If you don't know the story of the Gesha cultivar, it is an old coffee type from Ethiopia that was brought to an experimental coffee garden in Costa Rica years ago as a specimen sample. It was distributed to a few farms for testing on small plots, but not much was thought of it until one of these, Esmeralda in Panama, separated it from the other cultivars and entered it in the national competition. It was so outrageously different, with fruited and floral character like a Yirga Cheffe coffee from half a world away. Now that the word is out, other small farms that received some of the seed have tried to separate their Gesha coffee as well, as is the case here. The results are always a bit different: the cultivar "expresses" itself differently in terms of cup flavors at each location, influenced by weather, soil, altitude and the like. With this coffee, from the region of Acatenango, we have a Gesha cup that literally shouts out "GESHA!" at every step of the way. It has the elongated seed form, it roasts like Gesha, and has the fantastic, pronounced cup character. The dry fragrance can be detected from across my cupping room, so strong is the sweet hibiscus, jasmine and lightly toasted hazelnut. It lacks the volatile notes in the floral smell of the best Esmeralda Gesha here, but is remarkable still. The wet aroma has toasted hazelnut, and more floral qualities emerge at this stage. The cup might, initially, seem mild compared to these strong aromatics. Give it time to cool a bit, as the floral and fruited notes ascend as the temperature descends. The floral character is, once again, like jasmine, hibiscus, geranium flower essence; a floral potpourri. The effervescent brightness in the light roasts is distinctly citric, lime and kumquat. Flowers are married to an assembly of tropical fruit flavors. These fruit notes have passion fruit, rambutan, apricot. The list could go on, since each time I cup it, and at different temperatures, I get new fruited (and floral) notes out of this coffee. I guess that would be the very definition of complexity, this multi-dimensional flavor profile. The finish is so sweet, and in the long aftertaste there is a macadamia nut hint. Simply put, this is a very exotic cup, slightly less articulate than the high-priced Esmeralda Geshas of this year, but remarkable in it's own right. Quality on this lot is up from our offering last year, when the Gesha plants experienced damage from a windstorm. It's a fantastic cup!

This coffee is part of our direct trade Farm Gate pricing transparency program.

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Things got a little crazy at the auction for the top lot of coffee at the 2008 Guatemala Cup of Excellence. Sweet Maria's was in a buying group with the main bidder, Stumptown, and Maruyama Coffee from Japan. We had to get this coffee. But there was a powerful and unrelenting bidder out there, somewhere, someone with very deep pockets. That's where the craziness came in. And don't be shocked when I tell you it was Target. Yes ... THAT Target. Via a large roaster called CBI, Target wanted to make a statement and crash the party, get a lot of press, pay a lot of money, buy a coffee that (in my opinion) was the best Cup of Excellence lot of the season. We didn't know it then, but afterwards our group felt vindicated; we prevented the big guys from pillaging a treasured lot of coffee that each of us has bought for years and years. It was the highest CoE price of the year. Was it worth it (beyond vindication, beyond having a story to tell)? Well, when I cup this coffee I say, unequivocally, YES! This lot was prepared only from the large-bean Pacamara cultivar planted at the well-known farm El Injerto. This is a farm I visited from way back around 8 years ago, and that Stumptown has shared with us this year. Most of the coffee is planted between 1500 and 2000 meters, on a farm that dedicates a huge portion of its total land to an uncut old-growth forest. Pacamara means Pacas X Maragogype, the later being the large bean mutation that occurred spontaneously in Brazil 80 years ago. Pacas is a Bourbon hybrid that came from El Salvador in the '50s. Pacamara can be a little hard to roast due to the large bean size. I also note that this coffee passes from City+ to FC+ quickly, and with a proper rest time (72+ hours) the lighter roasts can be the best. The dry fragrance at C+ is complex, floral (violet), with layers of fruit (Rambutan, Lychee). The wet aromatics have tea, root beer and mulling spice suggestions, with some lingering fruited citrus. In the cup, the aromatic clues are realized in apple cider notes, spice (cinnamon, black pepper), sarsaparilla and a dark brown sugar sweetness that remains well into the aftertaste. As it cools there is a touch of dry black currant, mint and fig. The Injerto Pacamara is unique in the way it relates to other Pacamaras from El Salvador or Nicaragua. It's clean, sweetly fruited, spicy. Pacamaras grown at lower altitudes can be more herbaceous, oniony (salad onion or scallions usually) and a bit more muddled in the flavors ... less articulate. At FC roast the body is really velvety, with creamy chocolate truffle flavors, but the cup is less dynamic. The City and City+ roasts have a wrinkled bean appearance, not as pretty as FC or FC+, but with proper rest I think the cup is fantastic.

Update 5/27/09: I have had the opportunity to cup our Hacienda Esmeralda Gesha vac pack lots (#2, #10) from last year against the new crop, and was surprised at the quality of the '08 coffees. I took the most expensive coffee from the '09 auction home for the weekend, and brewing it every which way, I made coffee I thought was "nice" but nothing that really popped out, nothing I would pay $117 a pound for! It made me think about what I really would pay for a very special coffee, and during the long Memorial Day weekend I came up with a figure, $45 per pound, as a reasonable amount for really top notch, award winning coffee. At that rate, each cup is about $2, which seems like a fair price. And if I roasted a batch that really "nailed it on the head" and another that was a shade too dark, or too light, I wouldn't be all broken up about it. So I decided, given the fact we have a few expensive coffees in vacuum pack that are not selling in this down economy, why not have a $45/Lb. sale? We are offering our formerly $125 Panama Esmeralda Gesha Lot 2 for $45/Lb (without the pound of Lot 10 we were previously pairing it with). We bought only about 300 pounds of Esmeralda in the auction this year. We have cupped all of these vacuum pack coffees and they are fresh as they day they came in!

This coffee is part of our direct trade Farm Gate pricing transparency program.

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Finca La Bella is near San Cristobal Acasaguastlan in El Progreso, and is a fourth generation coffee farm. It is the only farm in El Progreso department that we have coffee from, but it is unique in other ways too. La Bella is a large farm with a small plot of Jamaica Blue Mountain Typica cultivar, and that is what we have here, the separated micro-lot of JBM coffee. As you may know, we buy a JBM cultivar from Kona, but we haven't actually bought a Jamaica coffee in quite a few years now. Why - I think you can guess ... it's the cup. Flat, dull, boring, blah. On the other hand we realize there is a degree of novelty in offering this pure JBM cultivar coffees grown in other locales. They were never planted in order to cash in on the name, and I can't tell you in a side-by-side cupping which would be a traditional Typica, and which is the JBM Typica. But I will say this is an old, traditional low-yield cultivar, and it cups like one. It's a great, balanced cup and would beat the crap out of any JBM in blind cupping, I betcha! It's a really beautiful, balanced tenor-toned cup. The dry fragrance has an overt caramelly tone, softly sweet. Adding hot water, there are ample chocolate tones, layers of milk chocolate and hints of pleasant bittersweetness. A bit of apple and warming spice emerge too. Light roasts have a lemony brightness, but anything City+ to Full Citys is all about body and milk chocolate. Caramel, toffee-apple, and root beer come out as the cup cools. It's not as acidic and bright as some of our other Guatemalas this year, such as La Maravilla or San Jose Ocana, but it's a very nice balanced "crowd-pleaser" flavor profile.

This coffee is part of our direct trade Farm Gate pricing transparency program.

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Finca Agua Tibia is a 150 year old farm located quite near Guatemala City in the Fraijanes region. Fraijanes was compared to the high price coffees from the region of Antigua in the past. After all, Fraijanes is about the same distance from the capital Guatemala City as Antigua, but in the opposite direction. The fact is, Fraijanes coffees have their own unique character, and some of that potential is just starting to be realized. Finca Agua Tibia (it literally means Farm of Lukewarm Water - sounds better in Spanish, eh?) is located at 5000 feet altitude, and the majority of the coffee land is planted in old growth Bourbon and Typica cultivar. It is a diverse farm, with a dairy, and ornamental plant nursery, and in fact 75% of the land is set aside as nature preserve. The fact they focus on other activities has aided the coffee quality in this case: they didn't tear out old trees and replant. They kept with traditional cultivars, and have the farm planted in giant, old-growth Typica and Bourbon types with less plants-per-hectare than other farms. It's an amazing place (if you see my Guatemala travelogues, I have many photos from the farm). I have cupped this coffee for years, and always had respect for it's fine balance; it struck me as a perfect example of neotypical Guatemalan cup profile. And in fact it seemed to be a more interesting cup, and have greater flavor attributes, than most Antiguas I had cupped. It's a consistently great coffee, and this 2009 crop continues the tradition. At a relatively light City+ roast, where some rough surface texture still exists on the bean, this cups out like a darker roast; pungent, and zesty chocolate bittersweets. I like that, because at this roast level it still has a very lively and bright cup too, things I value highly in a good high grown coffee. Dry fragrance as clean, sweet apple-like fruit, spice and chocolate, as does the wet aromatics. The cup has malic acidity, sweet and rounded, caramelly at City+ roast and with a tangy chocolate finish at FC roast. There are a lot of spicy notes in the cup: slight clove, and mulling spice. Along with the apple hint, this makes for a real "hot apple cider" effect, passing through into the long aftertaste. The body is not that heavy, and overall the coffee is not that intense, and very approachable. We made some excellent SO espresso shots from Agua Tibia at a FC roast level.



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Huehuetenango has some extraordinary coffee farms, and we have offered so many in the past: El Injerto, Huixoc, Injertal, and this one, Finca La Maravilla. I remember when we first offered this estate coffee, it's nicely fruited flavors and citrus brightness. So after several years of hiatus, we have it again, and it's every bit as good as the Maravilla of my memory. The farm is located very near El Injerto, in the La Libertad area of the state of Huehuetenango in Guatemala's north. The farm is owned by Mauricio Rosales and ranges from a very high 1500 meters all the way to 1850 meters. It is a bright coffee, a little lighter in body and less balanced perhaps than some of our other Guatemala offerings. But that is what makes it so special as well. The fragrance from the dry grounds has raisin and fig fruited notes, and a dark-toned sweetness. Adding hot water, the wet aromatics leap to life; caramel apple, pecans, with a zest of orange and red grape. The cup flavors are outstanding: This coffee has an ebullient brightness, sweet fruited notes, mild sweet chocolate-dipped nuts. The body is medium-to-light, which suits the lively nature of this cup well. (Light body with a heavy, rustic earthy Sumatra flavor profile would be odd, but with a higher-toned, refreshing coffee is seems appropriate). At C+ roast there is a nice bittersweet root beer note that develops into soft mild chocolate flavor at Full City roast level. As it cools there are nutty roast tones that come out, apple flavors, with a lingering citrus acidic snap to the cup. At Full City levels I am able to coax some darker berry notes from the cup. I have yet to pull an SO shot but hear from a top barista that it can be fantastic, and will try as soon as my roasts are properly rested.



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