LATEST REVIEWS

Nicely balanced sweetness and chocolate-toned roast pungency, complicated by a touch of pruny fruit. A bit simple and monotoned, but pleasantly and deeply so, like good minimalist music.

A solid if unexceptional Latin-American cup: Clean, bright acidy notes are complicated by a roasty bitterness, but the cup misses the enveloping sweetness that would bring both into harmony.

A sharp, monotoned flatness sits in the middle of the profile. Under and around it a delicious, delicately floral-toned sweetness peeks out. Pleasant dry fruit undertones.

Floral notes float shimmering atop the rather sharp, bitter, burned tones of the roast. Not much sweetness, but the subtle perfume of the flowers compensates.

Thrillingly sweet and buoyant when hot, with a hint of dry fruit modulating to chocolate. Light bodied but deeply dimensioned. A subliminal whiff of flowers teases in the aftertaste.

Big in every respect: in its richly powerful acidity, in body, in general statement. No floral innuendoes or fruity digressions here: This coffee is as abstractly dry, robust and mouthfilling as a good cabernet.

A pleasant, if odd-tasting, Kenya: full body, very little acidity, dominated by a sweet, rounded agreeably spicy flavor that suggests cardamom, cinnamon, pepper, even chicory. The most recognizable Kenya characteristic of this coffee is a deep, ringing dimension.

A symphony at the top of the profile: The acidy is sweetly ingratiating, the cup pleasingly light, delicately alive with fruit and floral tones. Flowers and citrus linger in the long, clean aftertaste. Not much in the bass range, however, except a smoky, pungent twist. Drink it hot; the splendid aromatics vanish quickly, leaving behind only pungent silence.

A subdued but gently satisfying Sumatra: clean, dry, low-toned fruit is bracketed by a shimmer of flowers at the top of the profile and a hint of pungency toward the bottom. Light-bodied and perhaps a bit shallow in dimension.

The bittersweet tang of the dark roast almost overwhelms the coffee, but agreeable if subdued wine-toned fruit notes survive. The finish flirts with the burned rubber sensation of faulty roasting, but the innate sweetness of the coffee prevails and turns the dubious taste vaguely but agreeably chocolate.

Bright rather than brisk. A classic combination of high-toned sweetness and gently dry acidity, animated by floral top notes. Only a faint touch of greenness or grassiness mars an otherwise fine American-style breakfast cup.

A sweet, high-toned coffee with a distinct musty or mildewy edge. The mustiness imparts a spicy, cocoa-like twist to the pruny fruit notes.

An uneven coffee, heartbreakingly uneven, given that some of the cups are extraordinary: exhilarating floral tones are balanced by a dry pungency, all wrapped in a comforting, enveloping sweetness. Other cups, however, lack the floral sweetness and are merely pungent bordering on bitter.

Dry but not acidy, dominated by a pleasantly smoky-toned cocoa sensation that sweetens toward chocolate in the finish. As usual, the Swiss Water Process simultaneously deepens and dampens taste: The body is full but the flavor understated.

A rather sharp pungency dominates this dark-roast blend, looming over some rather cowed dry fruit tones. A spicy sweetness shimmers here and there, notably in aroma and aftertaste.

Panelists described a clean-tasting, agreeable coffee that was perhaps too agreeable, low-key to a fault. "Good balance, but not much to balance," complained one panelist. "Nothing really to grab onto," wrote another. Finished well, with a hint of chocolate, and the cup seemed to strengthen in character a bit as it cooled.

This sweet, deep-toned coffee with its pruny fruit notes edging toward chocolate attracted considerable praise, though some panelists expressed ambivalence: "some character but not too interesting next to others"; "[a kind of] sweet, fruity flavor that I don 't much care for." Perhaps a faded mustiness restrained this coffee 's considerable potential.

Split vote, split coffee. The yeas responded to a bright, brisk, floral-and-fruit-toned richness with sweet cedar innuendoes. The nays were disturbed by hard, off-tasting undertones, perhaps a baggy mustiness.

A coffee whose interesting sweet fruit tones ("apricot" hazarded one panelist) edge into ferment, the overripe-cum-rotten flavor caused by sugars that prematurely ferment in the coffee fruit, tainting the bean inside the fruit. Complicating the ferment is a related off taste that some panelists tolerated and described with terms like "tobaccoey" and others condemned as "animal-like" and "skunky." In short, a promisingly sweet, complex coffee gone wrong.

A classically bright yet sweet cup shimmering with seductive floral and wine-like fruit notes. This coffee attracted lavish praise from the panel: "fruity, floral, working well together"; "noble fruit notes!"; "[light] body but very clean like a great Pinot"; "rich, sweet, very aromatic." Given such enthusiasm, why didn 't this fine coffee attract a higher aggregate rating? Perhaps owing to its relatively light body, perhaps owing to the barest hint of astringent imbalance in the acidity.