Reviews for Old Tavern Estate

Very sweet-toned, very deeply dimensioned aroma, with lush cedary chocolate notes and hints of banana and molasses. In the cup plush in mouthfeel, roundly resonant, chocolate-toned. Rich but simple finish.

Mid-toned and complex in the nose with fresh apricot and sweet cocoa. Simplifies slightly in the cup, turning roundly tart in a rich Meyer lemon direction. The immediate finish is slightly sharp, but the long finish smoothes out in a silky lemony, chocolaty trajectory.

Variants on citrus shimmer through this buoyant, sweetly acidy cup: lemon and cocoa in the aroma, lemon and pink grapefruit in the cup. The finish is sweetly tart.

Full body and sweet, voluptuously rounded acidity. Low-toned, symphonically complex fruit suggests melon in aroma, spicy apricot in cup and finish. A slight hint of mustiness is coiled inside the richness, modestly lowering my rating of this otherwise classic Blue Mountain cup.

The roast turns the fruit high-toned and dryly pungent: cedar and spice in the aroma, sweet grapefruit in the cup. As the cup cools the fruit softens toward pear. Fine balance of sweet and dry tones in the cup, though the finish is rather heavily astringent.

Reactions to this coffee ranged from enthusiasm to mild approval to ambivalence. The enthusiasts and mild approvers both tended to cite gently bright acidity, full body, and nut-toned aromatics. The enthusiasts felt the coffee brought power to the cup ("packs a punch"), while the approvers felt it didn't ("mild, mild, mild; sweet and soft cup"). The ambivalencers also honored the virtues of the coffee, but detected a slight shadow taint. One suggested that the sample was a bit "faded," another "baggy." Both adjectives suggest this otherwise meticulously clean coffee suffered very mild damage, perhaps moisture-related, during transport or storage.