Blind Assessment:

Beautifully structured, seething with intricate aroma and flavor notes. Lavender, jasmine, kiwi, pomegranate, sandalwood, much more in aroma and cup. Sweetly juicy, complexly expressed acidity; syrupy, gently buoyant mouthfeel. Flavor carries deep into a long, arcing finish.

Notes:

This extremely rare, refined coffee was developed by boutique exporter/importer Ninety Plus Coffee. Produced in tiny, coddled lots, it is an ultimately refined 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. This coffee when roasted for retail sale is sold in an attractive round fiberboard gift container. AHRIRE is a micro-roaster spun off from the ManLao River project, a non-profit project for alleviating poverty and protecting the environment in the Pu’er region of Yunnan Province. AH-RI-RE or “Tiger” in the Li language is the name of the head roaster, an ethnic minority who aims in his roasting to “showcase the robust, multi-faceted flavors in nature.”

Who Should Drink It: For those with substantial coffee budgets this is a stunning, memorable coffee, accessible yet vivid and extraordinary.