Exotic Reviews

A sweet, lyric coffee with remarkable complexity, starting with the aroma -- distinct leather notes, winy fruit, milk chocolate -- to the cup, where the wine tones deepen and take on an almost smoky edge. Clean, sweet, grape-like finish.

Cinnamon, pumpkin, chocolate smeared on leather in the aroma. In the cup overripe, lush, half-rotting fruit and carnal melon tones eventually suggest chocolate, which sweetens and rounds in the long, surprisingly clean finish.

A big-bodied, massively roasty coffee. Intense musty tones read as rosemary, cardamom perhaps, with a shimmer of chocolate. The intense, monumental character fades a bit as the cup cools.

Mid-toned and complex in the nose with fresh apricot and sweet cocoa. Simplifies slightly in the cup, turning roundly tart in a rich Meyer lemon direction. The immediate finish is slightly sharp, but the long finish smoothes out in a silky lemony, chocolaty trajectory.

Variants on citrus shimmer through this buoyant, sweetly acidy cup: lemon and cocoa in the aroma, lemon and pink grapefruit in the cup. The finish is sweetly tart.

Magnificent cup when hot: powerfully but sweetly acidy, resonating with complex chocolate nuance from aroma through finish. The acidity turns rather bitter and the profile simplifies as the cup cools.

Light-bodied, just on the pleasingly delicate side of thin, with oddly contradictory nuance: a roasty, prune-toned chocolate and high-toned shimmers of sweet vanilla.

Co-taster Willem Boot: "Fine and complex fruity/minty aroma. Exotic berry-like flavor notes with fascinating wild black currant aftertaste. Balanced, sweet and intriguing with milk" (93) Ken characterized the wild, sweet, edge-of-ferment fruit tones running through the profile from aroma to aftertaste as black cherry, and enjoyed them almost as much as Willem (90). In milk Ken completely concurred with Willem: "sweet, balanced, lovely."

Co-taster Willem Boot greatly admired this coffee, awarding it an exclamatory 95: "Reddish brown supershot! Complex aroma with tingling body. Mild sweet and dry flavor balance with intense fruit and spicy notes. Cardamom flavor with milk." Ken's admiration was more restrained. He enjoyed the low-toned bouquet of pipe tobacco, leather, toast, smoke, spice and musty cantaloupe notes enough to award a rating of 88, but found the body "gritty" (Willem called it "tingling") and the finish slightly astringent.

Both Ken and co-taster Willem Boot remarked on a medium but smooth, buttery body. Aromatics and flavor were "floral and slightly malty/musty, toasty and crisp" (Ken), "light chocolate & elegant, spicy-smoky" (Willem). "Pleasant[ly] caramel" in milk for Willem, "balanced, sweet yet crisp" for Ken. Willem 90, Ken 88.

Ken and co-taster Willem Boot both found the aroma impressive: resonant, floral, fruity. The body disappointed, however: "imbalanced and gritty" (Ken), "unsettled" (Willem). The flavor was "complex" for Willem, "rich" for Ken, with floral and fruit endnotes. Both were approving though not excited about performance in milk: "Tickling, spicy" for Willem, "dry chocolate" for Ken. Willem 85, Ken 84.

The moderately dark roast takes on equal billing with the green coffee here. It preserves the essential sweetness of the coffee, but pushes the acidity toward a rich, pungent citrus, a sort of roasty grapefruit, if that can be imagined. The finish is mildly but bracingly astringent.

Aging apparently tamed the acidity and turned it low-key but vibrant. Rich, cherry and red-wine notes hint at chocolate with patient drinking. A shadow bitterness can be taken as either marring or balancing the opulence of the fruit.

A fine monsooned Malabar with the usual low acidity and heavy body of this exotic origin, but here, in a skillfully executed light-roast style, unusually sweet with complex nuance: low-toned cantaloupe-like fruit and a pungent, gingery mustiness that easily reads as nut, and, with imagination, as malty toned chocolate.

Very sweet and very, very musty. Somewhere behind the malty, musty/mildew tones a rich, cherry-toned coffee lurks.

Medium-bodied but expansively rich with complex mid to low notes. Cedar, nuts and dry fruit in the aroma; sweetly melodic fruit and floral notes in the cup. A dash of astringency in the finish tightens the fruit notes toward grapefruit.

Reader Ben Anderson calls this coffee "fantastic." That familiar adjectivefreshens up when applied to Sulawesi coffees, whose unexpected forest and fruit notes often doseem to express a sort of adventurous coffee fantasy. When hot, this Sulawesi displayed a richcup with a fine balance of acidity, sweetness and roastiness plus - the Sulawesi factor - carnally rich fruit notes reminiscent of cantaloupe. I started with a rating of over 90, but as the cup cooleda slight salty astringency in the finish lowered my assessment.

Classic Kenya profile: Austerely dry and acidy, with a crisp, astringent-yet-sweet fruit note that coffee professionals are fond of describing as black current. If black current does not ring any synapses, try dried cherries. However described, this flavor note is exceptional in the world of coffee. The discerning reader who nominated this coffee offered no description, but bravely rated it a 95 to 100.

The moderately dark-roast style mutes the Kenya fruit and gives it a roasty, tart pineapple twist that softens toward a toasty chocolate in the finish. The darkish roast may transform the Kenya character, but the transformation is quite pleasurable in its own right.

"Bright, acidy, but luxuriously sweet -- high-toned, citrusy fruit suggests grapefruit. Slightly astringent in the finish but richly so (rating 88)." Chris really liked this coffee, awarding it a rating of 96: "Started things off right with a mouthwatering floral and citrus aroma. Very much the lone wolf of the cupping owing to its winey Yirgacheffe/Kenya character."