Los Angeles Reviews

An exhilarating and intense blueberry and wine character dominates the profile from aroma to finish. In the aroma the blueberry and wine tones are particularly pure and sweet. In the cup things grow more complicated: the blueberry takes a chocolate turn and the wine may strike some palates as too aggressively fermented. The finish is even more ambiguous, as the blueberry fruit persists nicely but takes a slightly soapy, salty direction. There are some coffee professionals who would give this unorthodox coffee a rating of 95; others would throw it off the table at 75.

Sweet, lyric fruit in the aroma: cherry, chocolate-toned blueberry. The fruit mutes in the small cup but the underlying structure is pleasing: rich, intense, medium-bodied and silky in mouthfeel. The berry notes carry into the slightly heavy finish. The blueberry character fattens nicely in milk, though the chocolate side of the flavor complex remains a bit tight and restrained.

Co-cupper Danny O'Neill and Ken both admired this coffee's sweet floral- and chocolate-toned aroma, cleanly bright (Danny) acidity and silky body. Danny (89) cited its quintessential balance, Ken (90) a "delicate, restrained giddiness" animated by floral, apple and pear notes.

The aroma is intense and complex: cherry, blueberry, brandy, chocolate, with an underlying edge of pungently spicy cedar. All carry richly into the cup with an excitement a bit too edgy for elegance. A slight shadow of astringency lurking in the cup emerges clearly in the long finish.

Intense aroma: brandy, chocolate, caramel. In the small cup medium in body but smooth in mouthfeel, crisply pungent yet caramelly sweet, with a tightly knit, understated complexity: brandy, caramel, cedar and flowers, hints of which persist in the roundly rich finish. Masters milk with a gentle, brandied chocolate authority.

High-toned, delicate (almost too) aroma: flowers, caramel, pipe tobacco. A bit sharp and astringent in the cup, but with a richly rounding caramel character and fine floral top notes. The caramel settles toward chocolate in the finish.

Very sweet-toned, intense aroma with distinctly buttery vanilla notes and hints of chocolate, honey and flowers. In the cup sweetly and richly acidy. The fundamental flavor complex is a chocolaty coffee fruit with heady complications of vanilla, flowers and honey.

A lush and coherent cup. Caramel and chocolate in the aroma. The caramel sweetness deepens in the cup, complicated by a wine- or apple-cider-toned fruit and continued hints of chocolate. Full, round mouthfeel.

In the aroma this relatively light-roasted coffee is caramelly but smoky, with cherry and sweet pipe tobacco notes. In the cup it is delicate yet robust and very sweet, with a smoothly rich acidity, heavy body, and a giddy complexity anchored around wine and cherry tones with hints of smoke and milk chocolate. The finish is clean, long and sweet.

Another Sumatra with intrigue, but more murky than mysterious. The aroma is marvelous, alive with vanilla and sweet aromatic wood tones, but the cup settles down into a heavy smokiness unrelieved by lift or sweetness. Hints of dry chocolate turn tobaccoish in the finish.