The eastern half of the African continent produces some of the world's most dazzlingly distinctive coffees, distinctive meaning identifiably different in flavor from the rest of the world's production. However, most aficionados' African experience is limited to coffees from the continent's two most celebrated origins, Kenya and Ethiopia, both in East Africa. What about the eight or ten other
Tasting Reports – Most Recent
Coffee Review has published more than 250 monthly coffee tasting reports since February 1997. The most recent tasting reports appear below in reverse chronological order. You may narrow your search by category from the main navigation drop-downs or by using the key word search feature that appears in the page header. The content in tasting reports and associated reviews was correct at the time of publication but may not remain accurate over time.
Now More Than Ever: Traditional Coffees of Sumatra and Sulawesi
It may seem a bit ghoulish to carry on about the pleasures of Sumatra coffee when communities not very far from the Sumatra growing regions are suffering through a catastrophe of unimaginably horrific proportions. However, as stark as the contrast may be between a coffee cup and news footage of upended cars, shattered houses and body bags, appreciating Sumatra coffee can only help Sumatrans. The
Top Twelve Coffees of 2004
Here are twelve of the most exciting coffees that we reviewed over the past year. Perhaps they illustrate a paradox, a version of the old saw about when the going gets tough the tough get tougher. Although green coffee prices generally spent a good part of 2004 exploring all-time lows and growers as a group suffered greatly, more really distinguished coffees showed up in our reviews than every
Savory Partnerships: Relationship Coffees
When putting together samples of relationship coffees for this month's review, it became obvious that "relationship" is as ambiguous a word in the world of coffee as it is in the world of people, where "having a relationship" can mean anything from virtually married to, well, something considerably more casual. What the coffees reviewed here have in common is that their path from tree to shelf
Prize-Winning Central American Coffees from the Cup of Excellence
Competitions aimed at finding and rewarding the best green coffees from a given country and crop have proven to be one of the great success stories in the recent history of coffee. The farmers whose coffees prevail in these juried competitions receive recognition and significantly higher prices, while aficionado consumers are rewarded with access to refined lots of exceptional coffees that
Ethiopia and Kenya: The World’s Most Distinctive Coffees
It's something of a no-brainer to claim that Kenya and Ethiopia are the world's two most distinctive (in other words, most different-tasting) coffee origins. Most cuppers would find it difficult to confidently identify the country of origin of a high-grown Central American coffee without a little help. ("A little too soft for a Costa Rica & Panama? Or maybe El Salvador ... or that fruit, could
The Fair-Trade Cup: Quality and Controversy
It has been some years now since the Fair Trade movement sprung itself on the specialty coffee world, using a passionate and skillfully managed media campaign to persuade a core of concerned consumers that they ought to pay a bit more for coffees that return more money directly to the small-holding farmers who grow the coffee. The timing couldn't have been more appropriate, because about the
Nicaragua: Sweet, Round and Progressive
Nicaragua is simultaneously a rising star of Central American coffee and a poster child for what's gone wrong with coffee generally over the past few years -- the enormous suffering and social dislocation caused by the recent drop in green coffee prices. I suspect these entwined roles as emerging success story and prominent victim both are owing to the early and persistent attention Nicaragua has
Mysores and Monsooned Malabars: Coffees of India
People are often surprised India produces any coffee at all, much less fine coffee, given the country's indelible association with tea. In fact, India is a long-time coffee producer, and a very substantial one (sixth in the world in 2002). Furthermore, Indians drink a lot of coffee, particularly in the south of India, where most Indian coffee is grown. And in the more affluent areas of urban
Boutique Espressos
In the 60s we used to talk about instant karma, meaning one minute you're criticizing someone's taste in bellbottoms and the next you're walking into the adjoining room and finding someone else knocking your flower-print shirt. My current episode of foot-in-the-mouth karma took a month, not quite instant, but definitely a quick turnaround from a karmic perspective. Last issue I noted a trend
Readers’ Nominations
Coffee Review readers nominated close to four hundred coffees for potential review over the past year or so. Here are my reviews of nineteen of those nominated coffees. Many of them were quite exciting; all were interesting. When selecting coffees for review from among those nominated I tried to balance between offerings of large companies that attracted multiple nominations (Starbucks, Caribou
Coffee from Celebrity Chefs (or their Restaurants)
Coffee, regrettably for those of us who love it, remains a bit of an afterthought at even the finest restaurants, a minor step in the denouement leading to the parking lot. I had dinner recently with some young coffee enthusiasts at a very famous restaurant. When it came time for wrapping things up one of the party (not me; I'm too jaded) asked the waiter to tell us about the coffee. The waiter
Emerging Origins
Let's start with origins that are already emerged, those that currently dominate American specialty coffee menu boards. There's Kona and Jamaica Blue Mountain, for example. They are well emerged. The insiders' favorites, like Kenya, Ethiopia and Guatemala, may be struggling with low coffee prices, but they also are definitely emerged. Colombia and Costa Rica are established classics, and Papua New
The Aficionado’s Pacific Northwest Espressos
If the Pacific Northwest has become identified with coffee generally, it has become even more identified with espresso. Though the espresso machine and its culture first romanced America via the Italian neighborhoods of New York and San Francisco, it only became fully Americanized in the Northwest in the 1980s. The basic Italian vocabulary of frothed milk, well-brewed espresso and a single dash of
Pacific Northwest Coffees
It's difficult for a long-time Berkeley guy like me to admit that the Pacific Northwest is the heart of current North American coffee culture, but it is. Seattle, Portland, and small cities and towns around and between are paved with coffee houses, coffee stands, cafes and specialty roasters of every possible level of size and sophistication, far more numerous and more varied than elsewhere.
At What Cost Convenience? Testing the New Single-Serve Coffee Systems
The idea sounds seductive: pop a single-serving package of ground coffee into a machine, press a button, and within a minute pull a fragrant cup of absolutely freshly brewed coffee out from under the spout. Because you brew a cup at a time and can select from an assortment of different little coffee packages, such a machine could (in theory) provide the coffee lover variety as well as freshness,
Fragrance and Weight: Winter Coffees from the Pacific
The coffees reviewed this month all offer the sort of heartily complex cup that suggests fires, throws, and warm, rich kitchen recoveries from the elements (or, in warmer climates, recoveries from holiday traffic jams). And most originate on the gigantic islands of southeast Asia: Sumatra, Sulawesi (Celebes), Timor and New Guinea. They are an altogether rather exceptional group of coffees, all
Holiday Gift Coffees
Like wine, coffee makes a modest but immediately gratifying and reassuringly consumable gift for the holidays. However, those who drink coffee drink it daily, so a gift of coffee needs simultaneously to be familiar enough to please but special enough to warrant celebration. We came up with a variety of strategies for identifying what might be special enough for the holidays, ranging from
The Tanzania Peaberry Mystery
Actually two intertwined mysteries - why peaberry, a grade of coffee that is potentially available from any coffee growing region in the world, is so firmly associated with a single origin - Tanzania - that it is 1) usually the only coffee available from Tanzania in specialty stores, and 2) often the only pure peaberry available from any country in specialty stores. It also turned out to be the
Beyond Antigua: The “Other” Guatemalas
Some adjectives become so firmly stuck to coffee country names that they almost lose their meaning. Antigua and Guatemala may be such a combination, so familiar together that coffee drinkers either don't know that there are coffee-growing regions in Guatemala other than Antigua, or don't even know Antigua is a region, not just a mysterious coffee word that must mean something positive or people