Finca Mauritania is owned aFinca Mauritania is owned and managed by Aida Batlle, who also brings us the award-winning Finca Kilimanjaro and her exclusive Grand Reserve each year. This is a special pulp natural process version of Mauritania. This means that the coffee cherry has its skin removed but the fruity mucilage is allowed to remain on the parchment layer. It is not broken down by fermentation as with a traditional wet process coffee. The result is a bit more body, lower acidity, and a shift in the flavor profile. Aida's Mauritania has been offered by our friends at Counter Culture for years, and they have had a long working relationship with this special coffee, investing so much time (and funds) to get the Finca Mauritania Organic certified. Sweet Maria's is just a grateful hitch hiker, and we are really happy to tag along for the ride. This farm is is on the Northern slope of the Santa Ana volcano, between 1400 meters and 1600 meters, and is planted in pure Bourbon cultivar. At my preferred roast (Full City) dry fragrance is caramelly, mildly fruited, and has a lot of milk chocolate. The wet aroma follows the same suit, but has more heightened chocolate pungency, and cinnamon spice on the break. The cup has such a balanced body, with Once again) chocolate, creamy and balanced. It has more of a semi-sweet flavor in the cup. Lighter roast has spiced tea flavors, peach danish, cinnamon (again), a touch of ginger, and fruited finish. The body seems creamy, and well-matched to the cup flavors. We had great results blending our lighter C+ roast with the FC roast, and FC+ produced a very nice espresso as well.
Sumatra Lintong Dolak Sanggul
This is a regional lot from South Sulawesi, from the area called Enrekang, grown on the slopes of Mount Alla. As happens often in Indonesia, the people of the region are also the Enrekang (or Endekan), and live a very traditional agricultural lifestyle. They also happen to have coffee from especially high altitude, and a separate coffee mill serving just this area. So for the first time this is a separate and distinct lot from this one processing station, rather than having it blended with other lower grown coffees. It is also a traditional "semi-washed" Indonesia process lot, meaning that it has the earth tones, rustic chocolate notes, low acidity and dense body that is anticipated in Sulawesi coffees (and has been missing in the clean, bright lots of recent years). I appreciate both styles of Sulawesi, but those who look for something closer to Sumatras will enjoy this Sulawesi Enrekang. The dry fragrance has plenty of earthy chocolate, but also a black pepper note, and a dark caramel sweetness. The cup is dense, chocolaty, low in acidity, and at first it seems a bit mild in the aftertaste. As it cools it "opens up" more, and the body seems opaque and syrupy in texture. It's sweet in that rustic, Indonesia kinda way, butterscotch-like. It's a good deep-toned cup. For the finish I jotted down these terms: Syrupy, Dense, Bittersweet. While having earth/humus aspects, it's also clean (if that can be, without contradiction). On the one hand, there is dirty, earthiness and on the other there is the smell of fresh dark earth, forest floor aromas, as we have said before. If the distinction is difficult to imagine, this cup of coffee can help!
Sumatra Gr.1 Mandheling
Dry-processed Sumatran coffees are the boldest of the Indonesian coffee-growing world. Low-acid, deep, complex; it is entirely sensed in the anterior regions of the palate. Our Grade 1 Sumatran Mandheling coffee from the region of Lake Toba and Lake Takengon (Mandheling is not really a region ...it is a Sumatran ethnic group) has a heavy body (dry-processing aids this) and a rich, complex earthy flavor. It has a pleasing, tangy bittersweet and aggressive musty twist in the flavor which makes it so popular among fans of the darker roast. Sumatras are earthy to varying degrees. It's Sumatra, it's great, and when it is a really good lot (and not past crop!) it always is: what more can be said.
This coffee is basically dry processed, so Idd-looking beans are not culled out before roasting ...you will be surprised how well things work out in the end. You can't buy Sumatras based on the appearance of the green coffee: certain odd looking beans contribute to the pleasantly aggressive cup profile, and certain over-prepared lots can be flat and without proper Sumatra character.
Finding good lots of Mandheling is difficult, especially now that the demand is high, the Tsunami has put more political pressures on the area, (the Tsunami did not affect coffee lands), and the coffee is selling way over the market prices as it used to . Still, it is ubiquitous. Anyone can stock a Sumatra -just call any broker and buy a bag. But getting a really good lot takes a lot of cupping and a good sense of timing. The best Sumatras usually aren't the first arrivals of the new season, nor the last, but exactly where the crop quality will peak is hard to say. Actually the crop starts arriving in November or so but early lots were not good- and in fact it appears now that the exporters are blending old crop and new crop lots in the early shipments -an unsavory practice. Our supplier waits for the "peak of the crop" to arrive for the best cup quality, and this arrival was exactly that (a buit later than peak, actually).
Now, this is not a pretty looking coffee, but then again we don't taste with our eyes. You need to look past appearance and just roast it. And as far as that goes, I am recommending darker roasts than previous years, Full City+, a few snaps into 2nd crack. This is a deep, brooding, pungent, bass note coffee, with and undertone of earthy dark chocolate.
Farm Gate Coffees from our supplier
Farm Gate Coffee is the name we give to our direct trade coffee buying program. Farm Gate pricing means that we have negotiated a price directly with the farmer "at the farm gate," that is, without any of the confusing export and import fees. The prices we pay for our coffees are above Fair Trade minimums, and with our Farm Gate coffees we can easily verify that the good price we pay makes it to the people who do the work, and are responsible for the great cup quality of our coffee. Farm Gate is a simple principle that allows coffee producers to make premium prices in reward for coffee quality, and to reinvest to improve quality even more in the future.
We guarantee that Farm Gate prices are 50% over Fair Trade (FT) pricing, but often they are 100%+ more that FT minimums. We support FT, and continue to offer FT lots. Fair Trade is a co-op certification - that is, it also does not allow certification for small independent farms - it is for co-ops only. We do support coffee co-ops, they are often not what consumers might think. There are many excellent co-ops, and many that are large, powerful, corrupt, and mired in bureaucracy. We avoid the bureaucracy of coops that sometimes do not share premium prices with their farmer members. Fair Trade certifies that the co-operative received the FT price, but it does not guarantee that the men and women who produce your coffee were paid the FT price.
On the flip side, bear in mind that FT is a global standard, is verified by certifiers that make regular (if infrequent) visits to the coops. We don't have a third-party certifier. Instead we substitute our direct involvement at ground level in the buying process with farms, that we know what they received if we are paying them through a middle-person. Exporters and importers have a changing role, offering a service as logisitcs coordinators (and an important one at that) rather than coffee resellers. Any coffee bought off an importer/broker list does not qualify for Farm Gate, and we do still buy some coffees that way. Further, lots from origins where hundreds of tiny farms contribute to even the smallest importable lots, such as Sumatra, or Yemen, can't qualify for Farm Gate in many cases nor can Auction Lot Kenyas, even though we pay extremely high prices for all these coffees, and know from direct observation that a premium reaches the farmer.
