Two or three years ago, offering small, distinctive lots of coffee on a temporary, seasonal basis and calling them "special reserve" or "limited edition" appeared to be one of the most promising trends in specialty coffee. These offerings proposed to wean coffee drinkers from expecting the same kind of consistency in single-origin coffees as they might expect from brands of beer or soft drinks:
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Decaffeinated Costa Rica
No decaffeination process is listed, suggesting that this Costa Rica was decaffeinated by the conventional or direct solvent method. PT's is a quality-oriented wholesale/retail specialty roaster with a wide and refined selection of coffee blends and origins. The PT's motto is "without the love, it's just coffee." Visit www.ptscoffee.com or call 888-678-5282 for more information.
Decaffeinated Single-Origins: A Slow Tour with Limited Stops
How deep a flavor rut are coffee drinkers stuck in if they give up caffeine? Are they eternally condemned to token decaf blends at the end of the counter, or can they tour the world by cup, or try to save it by cup, like their caffeine-consuming colleagues? Based on this month's cupping of decaffeinated single-origin coffees, options are rather limited when you travel by decaf. A couple of
Reserva del Patron Colombia Narino
Reserva del Patron is a very high-grown and exceptionally rigorously selected green coffee from an admired growing region in the southernmost Colombia Department of Narino. PT's is a quality-oriented wholesale/retail specialty roaster with a wide and refined selection of coffee blends and origins. The PT's motto is "without the love, it's just coffee." Visit www.ptscoffee.com or call 888-678-5282
Juan Valdez’s Progeny: Micro-Lot and Other Fine Colombias
This month's cupping of coffees from Colombia confirms that this giant among coffee producers has successfully turned at least a portion of its industry from supplier of immense quantities of good-but-not-great generic "100% Colombian" coffee to prized source of smaller (sometimes tiny) lots of subtly distinctive specialty coffees. Handsome symbol Juan Valdez and his photogenic mule are being
La Bella Vita Espresso Blend
Assessed on a La Marzocco professional machine with brewing temperature set at 200F. One-ounce shot achieved approximately 25 seconds after the first drop. Tested in milk by combining a one-ounce shot with two parts and then four parts 2% milk. PT's is a quality-oriented wholesale/retail specialty roaster with a wide and refined selection of coffee blends and origins. The PT's motto is "without
Rwanda Bufcafe
The coffee cooperatives of Rwanda, benefiting from superb growing conditions, traditional varieties of arabica and support from aid agencies and coffee idealists, are beginning to produce coffees that rank among the world's finest and most distinctive. PT's is a quality-oriented wholesale/retail specialty roaster with a wide and refined selection of coffee blends and origins. The PT's motto is
Panama Elida Estate, Best of Panama #3
A prize winner in the 2007 Best of Panama competition, where as a green (unroasted) coffee it placed third out of hundreds of entries, attracting a score of 90.2 from an international jury. PT's is a quality-oriented wholesale/retail specialty roaster with a wide and refined selection of coffee blends and origins. The PT's motto is "without the love, it's just coffee." Visit www.ptscoffee.com or
El Salvador La Montana, Cup of Excellence #1
A prize winner in the 2007 El Salvador Cup of Excellence (www.cupofexcellence.org) competition, where as a green (unroasted) coffee it placed first out of hundreds of entries, attracting a score of 92.8 from an international jury. This lot, selected by farmer Raul Ochoa, is composed entirely of beans from trees of the recently developed but admired Pacamara variety of arabica, a large-beaned cross
Orange Bourbon El Salvador
Bourbon is the most admired of the traditional varieties of arabica grown in Latin America. "Orange Bourbon" is a particularly meticulously picked and processed 100% Bourbon coffee developed by Aida Batlle, one of El Salvador's (and Central America's) finest and most innovative coffee producers. PT's is a quality-oriented wholesale/retail specialty roaster with a wide and refined selection of
Biloya Selection One Ethiopia
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. Biloya Selection One is a specially prepared and selected lot of dry-processed coffee from the Yirgacheffe region air-shipped to the United States to preserve freshness. PT's is a quality-oriented wholesale/retail
Panama Carmen Estate 1750 Reserve
Carmen Estate is among the most distinguished of Panama's many fine coffee farms, with a string of successes in green coffee competitions. The 1750 Reserve is a small lot of very high-grown coffee mostly from trees of the traditional typica variety exclusively selected for PT's Coffee. PT's is a quality-oriented wholesale/retail specialty roaster with a wide and refined selection of coffee blends
Fair-Trade Coffees: The Controversy and the Cup
There are likely to be two categories of reader for this article: Those who know something about Fair Trade coffees (and who probably hold strong opinions on the subject) and those who don't. For those who don't, Fair Trade certification is an assurance from an internationally recognized third-party certifier (in the United States the certifier is TransFair USA) that the green coffees contained
Peace Blend
The components of this blend are organically grown and certified Fair Trade, meaning they were purchased from small-holding farmers at a "fair" or economically sustainable price. PT's is a quality-oriented wholesale/retail specialty roaster with a wide and refined selection of coffee blends and origins. The PT's motto is "without the love, it's just coffee." Visit www.ptscoffee.com or call
Panama Esmeralda Especial
Coffee from trees of the botanical variety "Gesha" or "Geisha" grown on farmer Price Peterson's Hacienda La Esmeralda in Panama has for the last several years consistently broken records paid for a green coffee: A 2007 lot sold at auction this for an extraordinary $130 per pound. This lot of Gesha is from the same fields, crop and variety as the record-breaking auction lot but was sold outside
Costa Rica La Minita Estate
La Minita Estate is perhaps the most consistently celebrated of single farm or "estate" coffees, and the one that some two decades ago, under the leadership of William McAlpin, pioneered the concept of single-estate coffees. It is a coffee particularly distinguished by a consistency and purity of character unmarred by shadow taints from fruit removal or drying. PT's is a quality-oriented
Biloya Selection One Ethiopia
This Ethiopia is a "natural" or dry-processed coffee, meaning the beans/seeds were dried inside the fruit, producing a flavor profile that is lower-toned with a deep, wine-and berry-like fruit. Like virtually all Ethiopia coffees, this striking and unusual coffee is produced by villagers on small, garden plots interplanted with food and other subsistence crops. PT's is a quality-oriented
Rwanda Bufcafe
The coffee cooperatives of Rwanda, benefiting from superb growing conditions, traditional varieties of arabica and support from aid agencies and coffee idealists, are beginning to produce coffees that rank among the world's finest and most distinctive. PT's is a quality-oriented wholesale/retail specialty roaster with a wide and refined selection of coffee blends and origins. The PT's motto is
East Timor Maubesse Fair-Trade Organic
Certified organically grown and Fair Trade, meaning it was purchased from small-holding farmers at a "fair" or economically sustainable price. East Timor is a small country sharing the island of Timor with Indonesia. Mainly Catholic and Portuguese-speaking East Timor was much in the news a few years ago when it finally achieved independence from Indonesia after a complex, bloody struggle that
Sweetness and Earth: Java, Sulawesi, Bali, Timor
One starting point for understanding the intriguing coffees that emerge from the islands of Indonesia (Sumatra, Sulawesi, Java, Bali) and Timor is the prosaic issue of processing, or how the fruit is removed from the coffee seeds and how they are dried. The famous "earthy" character of traditional Sumatra and Sulawesi coffees clearly derives from a peculiar prolonged sequence of drying acts