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.

Classic Espresso Blends

In an American context, a classic espresso blend is one that achieves the heavy body and natural sweetness required of espresso brewing by skillful combining of naturally sweet, full-bodied coffees, rather than by trying to subdue acidy coffees through aggressive dark roasting. In these terms, all nine of the blends in this month's espresso tasting can be said to honorably aspire to the

Prize-Winning Panamas

Soft and sweet? Or bland and flat? Balanced versus boring? Subtle versus inconsequential? Imagine similar sets of adjectives, and you have the delicate inner struggle that characterized this month's cupping of current-crop coffees from Panama. Panama is a rising star, an up-and-coming contender, among Central America coffee origins. All premium Panama coffees are produced on large family-owned

Central America Coffees

Again and again while writing the reviews of this splendid assortment of Central America coffees I found myself attempting to characterize the classic American cup, the cup that American supermarket blends aspire to, but never come close to fulfilling. It is a dry, bright, acidy cup, yet sweet and round, transparently free of earth or ferment, yet alive with high-toned, subtle nuance: nut and

The Mocha Taste

The eleven coffees the Coffee Review panel cupped this past month represent the essence of coffee romance and history. They are representatives of the world's original coffees, quite literally embodying history in the cup. Ethiopia is the botanical home of the coffee arabica tree, and Yemen, just across the Red Sea from Ethiopia at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, is where the tree was

Decaffeinated Coffees

The last time I wrote on decaffeinated coffees I said drinking them was like listening to good music through cheap speakers. The analogy still stands. No matter what the decaffeination method or how careful the decaffeination procedure, coffee loses something more than the (tasteless) caffeine during the rather brutal process of removing it. Or the coffee changes in unexpected ways. The San

1999 Papua New Guineas, Timors, and a Lone Java

An assortment of intrigues and questions animate this month's panel cupping of coffees from the eastern islands of the Malay Archipelago: Papua New Guinea, Timor, and Java. Among those questions and intrigues: Papua New Guinea estate-grown coffees are among the up-and-coming challengers in the world of fine coffee. How good are the best estate-grown Papua New Guineas? Can they match the drama

Supermarket Coffees

Twenty years ago the line was clear between specialty coffees and "commercial" coffees. Specialty coffees were sold whole-bean, freshly roasted, in stores that offered their customers a wide range of choice in roast style and origin. Commercial coffees were represented by the almost identical contents of cans lined up like fat little percolator-ready soldiers on supermarket shelves. Obviously,

Coffees of the Millennium

Coffees of the millennium may sound grandiose (what's next, skateboards of the millennium?), but the more I considered the idea the more persuasive and interesting it became. After all, coffee's profound appeal to the human palate and nervous system literally helped constitute the modern world. As one of the world's most actively traded commodities (second in value behind oil), coffee has been a

Holiday Coffees

The word holiday attached to a coffee presumes one of two related functions: Either you drink it at your celebrations or give it to someone else to drink at their celebrations. Roasted coffee is not something you save for next year. Coffee is an existentially authentic gift; it lives in the now. The eleven coffees sent to us by eight roasters fall into two further categories: special

Wet-Processed Ethiopia Coffees

An interesting trivia question to ask people is where coffee originated. Virtually everyone looks confused, and, when pressed, usually tries a Latin-American country: Colombia, say, or Brazil. Of course, Coffee arabica, the species that produces all fine coffees, originated in the highland forests of Ethiopia, in the Horn of Africa. The arabica tree, which still grows wild in the middle tier of

Single-Store Roasters

Specialty coffee started with a single-store roaster. Or maybe three or four. Alfred Peet's famous Vine Street store in Berkeley had a little Royal roaster in back of the counter when I first visited it in 1970, the pipe rising precariously (and crookedly, if I remember rightly) toward the high ceiling. Across the Bay in San Francisco Freed Teller & Freed had been roasting in the back room of

Colombia Coffees

Colombia is the paradox of specialty coffee. Its 100% Colombia campaign, initiated decades ago and still rolling, is a model of successful coffee organization, institutional persistence, and savvy marketing. Colombia remains the world's only premium single origin able to compete successfully in the world of commercial roast-and-ground canned coffee. And the Colombia Federation of Coffee Growers is

New Crop Guatemala Coffees

Guatemala is rivaled only by Kenya as coffee insiders' favorite origin. The terrible ravages of decades of brutal civil war have ironically helped preserve that position, since those years of disorder discouraged the technification of Guatemala coffee, meaning the replacement of heirloom, shade-grown varieties of Coffea arabica with hybrid, full-sun varieties heavily dependent on chemical

Extreme and Not-So-Extreme Dark Roasts

I often am accused of "not liking" dark-roasted coffee. Whereupon I try to explain that what I don't like are bad dark roasts: thin-bodied, burned dark roasts. Tactfully developed dark roasts, those in which the sugars have been caramelized rather than burned and in which enough fat survives to smooth the cup, are fine with me. And if some nuance also survives, or better yet, transforms in some

A Dozen Keepers

The twelve coffees reviewed here represent a sort of best-of-category selection of coffees that have made their way to my table over the last couple of months. The four Hawaii coffees are new offerings from this past winter's 1998/99 crop, as is the Jamaica Blue Mountain. The three blends are either new to everyone (The Roasterie's Fifth Anniversary Blend) or new to me. The Allegro Yemen, the

Indonesias and Papua New Guineas

Sumatra probably became America's favorite Indonesia coffee because in the early days of specialty coffee it seemed the most distinctive origin from the region: heavier and richer than Java, twistier and more complex than Papua New Guinea, a bit more consistent and accessible than similar coffees from Sulawesi. And back then, East Timor, the source of two of the Indonesia coffees in this month's

Kenyas and Other East Africas

Specialty coffee professionals tend to be protective of Kenya. For one thing, it remains the world's single most consistent source of superlative coffee. And Kenya is superlative in the particular ways American specialty professionals define superlative: alive with the dry, vibrant sensation called acidity, fruity without cloying sentiment, big and resonant.Furthermore, most specialty folks admire

New Crop Sumatra Coffees

Back in 1975, when I wrote my first book on coffee, Sumatras were a revelation: long, tawny-colored beans with a wonderful deep-toned, bass-tickling richness. The cup was heavy, but alive with fruit and smoke. The bags came marked with sonorous names like Mandheling and Lintong. It was easy to project Conradian into those names and that dark luxuriousness. Those archetypal Sumatras I first