This month at Blue Coffee Box, we are featuring 6 new gourmet coffees for February Instead of doing a post on each coffee, we decided to put them all in one place for you.
Below you will find the list, as well as the roasters we are sourcing these coffees from this month as well.
Gourmet Coffees for February
Bazaar
Producer: Kore Villiage
Varietals: Heirloom
Processing: Washed & Sun Dried
Altitude: 1900-2150m
Country: Ethiopia
Region: Kochere, Yirgacheffe
Cupping Notes: Pink peppercorn, citrus tea, pear
Roaster: Crosby Coffee
At first glance, the hills in this part of Ethiopia look thickly forested but in fact, it is a heavily populated region and the hills are dotted with many dwellings and villages' like Kore growing what is known as garden coffee'. Like many high-end coffees from the Yirgacheffe region, this is grown at a high altitude and therefore needs to be picked carefully by hand.
There are approx. 30 cooperatives in the region, representing almost 50,000 farmers working more than 62,000 hectares of garden coffee.
For this washed processed lot the freshly harvested cherries are pulped on the same day as they are picked and then dried for 10 to 12 days on drying beds on steep hillsides that are exposed to great amounts of wind. The end result is a cup jam-packed with delicate fruity flavour brewed hot or cold.
Narjanja
Producer: The Perez Family
Varietals: Bourbon, Caturra, Catuai
Processing: Washed
Altitude: 1400-2000m
Country: Guatemala
Region: Huehuetenango
Cupping Notes: Dark chocolate, marmalade, orange citrus
Roaster: Crosby Coffee
The coffee-growing altitude in Huehuetenango is the highest in the country and can comfortably grow here up to 2000 MASL thanks to the currents of hot air sweeping up from the Plains of Tehuantepec, in Oaxaca, Mexico, and mix with the cool air descending from the Cuchumatanes Mountains.
Producers here typically own a couple of hectares for growing coffee, and wet-process before drying the clean parchment in the sun on small patios next to their homes. Growers process their coffee themselves since centralized wet mills are very unusual in the region.
The Perez family began as sugar cane farmers in Huehuetenango before branching out into coffee and now operate some of the more successful fincas in the country.
This coffee is another successful collaboration of their ever-expanding family: Lety Perez (Finca Buenos Aires Huixoc), Rene Perez (Finca La Reforma) and Willy Perez (Finca Las Americas/Finca San Antonio)
EL Jaguar
Producer: Various local farmers
Varietals: Caturra, Catuai, Bourbon
Processing: Fully washed, sun dried
Altitude: 1350m
Country: Mexico
Region: Chiapas
Cupping Notes: Cinnamon, dark chocolate, vanilla, tangerine
Roaster: John Watt
These beans are grown by a small group of producers farming in Siltepec, a small municipality in Chiapas which is the main coffee producing state in Mexico. The farms are high up on the Sierra Madre which makes the beans Strictly Hard Bean or SHB, as it is grown over 1400m.
At this high altitude, the beans grow slowly, this allows them to collect more nutrients as they grow which increases the flavour and complexity of the final coffee. The farms border the biosphere reserve El Trifuno which is the most diverse evergreen cloud forest in Mexico, and one of the most important sites for bird migration.
Several threatened mammalian species can be found in the reserve, namely Geoffroy's spider monkey, margay, jaguar and puma. The weather is humid with lots of shade, cool conditions at night and excellent soil, all the best ingredients to make perfect coffee beans.
Cerro Dragon Microlot
Producer: Ricardo Valverde Fernandéz
Varietals: Caturra, Catuai
Processing: Honey
Altitude: 1500m
Country: Costa Rica
Region: San Jose
Cupping Notes: Balanced and sweet taste with apricot notes
Roaster: John Watt
Only about 75 bags of Honey Cerro Dragón are produced per year which, as far as we are concerned, puts this coffee firmly into Micro lot territory.
We consider a Micro lot as a specially cultivated and picked batch of beans from either a small producer or from a dedicated section of a larger plantation.
It is kind of like a special edition coffee, or like when a rare wine is made from a grape picked from a defined section of a vineyard in a defined year. Finca Cerro Dragón sits at an altitude of around 1500m with an average yearly temperature around 20 °C.
This makes the coffee from this farm Strictly Hard Bean or SHB, as it is grown over 1400m. At this high altitude, the beans grow slowly, this allows them to collect more nutrients as they grow which increases the flavour and complexity of the final coffee.
Arokara
Producer: Arokara Cooperative
Varietals: Typica, Bourbon, Arusha
Processing: Washed, sun dried
Altitude: 1300-1600m
Country: Papua New Guinea
Region: Eastern Highlands, near Kainantu
Cupping Notes: Dark chocolate, plum, winey
Roaster: 47 Degrees Coffee
AA Arokara comes from the Arokara Cooperative in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The co-op works with a few local plantations, the largest of which are Tairora and Gadsup. These plantations were originally set up with modern farming methods by the Rural Development Bank.
In the last 10 to 15 years, the plantations have been returned to the ownership and management of their original landowner groups, who do not use any chemicals or fertilizers in the production process. The cherry is hand-picked by the whole group (or clan, as they are called locally) and then pulped on the same day and fermented in cement vats for 36 hours.
After the fermentation process, the coffee is washed with fresh mountain stream water from the nearby Aru River and then sun-dried until it reaches the nice, even blueish colour that coffees from the area are known for.
Sul de Minas
Producer: Rio Verde
Varietals: Mundo Novo, Catuaí, Catucaí, Acaya
Processing: Pulped natural
Altitude: 1100m
Country: Brazil
Region: Sul de Minas
Cupping Notes: Nutty notes, chocolate notes
Roaster: 47 Degrees Coffee
Rio Verde was founded in 1887. Located in the heart of the Mantiqueira de Minas Mountains, this 1.500-hectare farm is a true natural sanctuary, where coffees are grown at elevations of up to 1.300 meters above sea level, surrounded by virgin forests, waterfalls, springs and hiking trails.
Its clay soil is rich in decomposed minerals, and full of nutrients due to its rich flora and fauna as well as water springs. High elevations combined with mountainous topography create their own microclimate. Mild temperatures and rainfall average of 1600 mm a year are ideal for growing Yellow Bourbon, Acaya, Yellow Catuai, Yellow Topazio, Mundo Novo, Yellow Icatu and Catucai.
The diversity of the environment along with many coffee varieties produce numerous terroirs with all kind of flavour and taste nuances, resulting in more complex coffee profiles.
For more speciality coffees like these, be sure to subscribe to Blue Coffee Box. You can check out our past featured coffees here.
