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We have published thousands of coffee reviews and espresso reviews since 1997. The reviews below appear in reverse chronological order by review date. Older reviews may no longer accurately reflect current versions of the same coffee. To search for a specific roaster, origin or coffee use the Advanced Search Function.
A Kenya in the more delicate mode: dry yet sweet, crisply fruity with grapefruit, apricot and black currant notes. Turns from crisp to slightly astringent in the finish.
Seductively sweet, delicately balanced, high-toned. Meyer lemon notes when hot, chocolate and nut as the cup cools. Medium to light-bodied, but pleasingly silky in mouthfeel.
Aging apparently tamed the acidity and turned it low-key but vibrant. Rich, cherry and red-wine notes hint at chocolate with patient drinking. A shadow bitterness can be taken as either marring or balancing the opulence of the fruit.
What coffee people call acidity, the dry yet sweet sensation characteristic of high-grown coffees, is the main event here: rich, dominating, toned by black-cherry fruit with a slight cabernet-like twist.
Intense but sweet, fruit-toned acidity; delicate but rich in presence and mouthfeel. Lemon and grapefruit notes in the aroma; lemon and floral tones in the cup. The finish is lightly astringent but rich.
A quintessential Kenya: sweetly and richly acidy, the cup complicated by the crisp, complex, dry fruit notes characteristic of Kenyas: grapefruit, black currant, black cherry. The finish is dryly tart but clean.
High-toned, sweet, light-footed and delicate, yet rich and deeply dimensioned. Lemon and red-wine notes in the aroma, in the cup red wine, cherry and a shimmer of flowers. Long, complex finish.
A wildly flawed but perversely interesting coffee. Dramatically uneven from cup to cup, with some cups dominated by a heavy and rather oppressive Mediterranean spice character (thyme or rosemary) and others displaying less oppressive and more pleasant floral and bitter fruit tones - in the latter case, imagine bitter-chocolate-covered jasmine petals. All of this aromatic peculiarity probably derives from a combination of mildly fermented fruit with a musty overlay acquired while the still fruit-encased beans were drying.
Very sweet and very, very musty. Somewhere behind the malty, musty/mildew tones a rich, cherry-toned coffee lurks.
Moderately acidy, medium to full bodied, sweet, rich, balanced, mid-toned. Not much nuance but a sturdy cup with a juicy tickle of cleanly fermented fruit. Marred by a rather bitter finish.
A sweet, fruity Peru that suffers from musty, mildewed tones. The mild musty influence turns the fruit and floral notes pungent, dry, and bittersweet. Pleasantly so, aside from the rather heavy finish.
Low-key, mild, balanced to a fault. Sweet, with the round richness of a good Viennese blend, but ultimately unexpressive and rather inert.
A low-toned but resonant, agreeable blend, crisp with tart, berry-toned fruit. Rather lean-bodied but rich in impression. The finish is sweet and balanced.
Medium-bodied, sweet, with the typical wild, slightly fermented Yemen fruit tones, in this case suggesting overripe cherry, apricot, and melon. In the finish the fruit ferment reads as a sort of brandied, bittersweet chocolate. A slight astringency in the finish suggests that during storage this coffee faded a bit, as Yemens quickly do.
Delicate and soft, with a tart sweetness suggesting Meyer lemon. Supple, smooth, elegant.
The softer style of Kenya: sweet, flirty, utterly seductive, but with a gently acidy backbone. In the aroma crisp temperate fruit tones, apple or pear perhaps, in the cup flowers and chocolate.
A grandly acidy coffee, austerely tart yet voluptuously sweet. Complicated by hints of green apple or pie cherry, but the main expression is the huge, rich gesture of the acidity. The finish is tart but round and opulent.
Medium bodied but delicate, soft, exquisitely balanced, giddy with sweet fruit tones that may suggest cherry but ultimately express the purity and elegance of a perfectly processed coffee. The finish is sweet, long, and gently rich.
Smoky and richly heavy in its aromatics, but rather musty and monotoned in the cup. The musty tones, as they often do in Sumatras, hint at positive associations like spice and a sort of rough chocolate, but ultimately are too hard and unresilient to sustain too positive a reading.
Rich but subdued, with a stealthy, understated sweetness. Some aromatic intrigue suggests apples and spice. The restrained aroma and rather flat finish compromises an otherwise roundly expansive Caribbean cup.
