Blind Assessment:

Evaluated as espresso. Extravagant, intricate, yet balanced. Strawberry guava, tangerine zest, lilac-like flowers, sandalwood, roasted cacao nib in aroma and small cup. Velvety and honeyish in mouthfeel. Deeply fruit-toned and sweet in the finish. Superb in three-parts milk: juicy, fruit-toned, chocolaty.

Notes:

This exceptional coffee was selected as the No. 16 coffee on Coffee Review’s list of the Top 30 Coffees of 2016. Produced from trees of the rare Ethiopia-derived botanical variety Gesha (also spelled Geisha). With its elegantly elongated beans and distinctive floral and crisp, often chocolaty cup, the Gesha variety continues to distinguish itself as one of the world’s most unique coffees. This is in extremely refined presentation of the Gesha variety developed by boutique exporter/importer Ninety Plus Coffee. Produced in tiny, coddled lots, it is a dry-processed or “natural” coffee, meaning the beans were dried inside the fruit rather than after the fruit has been removed, as is the case with wet-processed or “washed” coffees. In the case of this coffee the drying was carried out in a temperature- and moisture-controlled solar drier, a proprietary method developed by the Ninety Plus team. Creation Food is a food service company with a specialty coffee division. It operates one of the few large-scale coffee production facilities in Taiwan. Visit www.creation.com.tw or call 0800-020-368 for more information.

The Bottom Line: Espressos, particularly single-origin espressos, don’t get much better than this one, seething with fruit, floral and incense-like nuance yet delicately balanced and complete.