Blind Assessment:

Big, round, deeply and pungently layered. Fragrant cedar, lavender, baker’s chocolate, Concord grape, a hint of mace in aroma and cup. Bittersweet and rich in structure; fat and plush in mouthfeel with a drying edge. Concord grape and cedar dominate in a continuing pungent but quite sweet finish.

Notes:

Produced from trees of the rare Ethiopia-derived botanical variety Geisha (also spelled Gesha) on the Chiari family’s Finca Lerida Esplenderosa in Jaramillo under the management of family member Sonia Amoruso. With its elongated beans and distinctive cup, the Geisha variety continues to distinguish itself as one of the world’s most unique coffees. In all honey processing methods, skins are removed, but some sweet pulp or fruit flesh (“honey”) is allowed to adhere to the beans during drying. In the black honey variation, virtually all of the pulp is allowed to dry on the beans and the beans may be subject to a particularly slow drying process, often netting a deep, pungent profile. Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea is a pioneer specialty coffee roaster established in the early 1980s that has gracefully and successfully moved with the times and now offers a menu of extremely refined small-lot, single-origin coffees. Visit www.willoughbyscoffee.com or call 800-388-8400 for more information.

The Bottom Line: Grapey sweetness working against a complex cedary, lavender-toned pungency distinguishes this intriguing black-honey-processed version of great Geisha cup.