Exotic Reviews
We found 284 reviews for Exotic. The reviews below appear in reverse chronological order by review date. Older reviews may no longer accurately reflect current versions of the same coffee.
Considerable dry-chocolate intrigue behind the dark-roast pungency. The aroma is extraordinary: light and buoyant with sweet vanilla-chocolate notes and a hint of nut. Settles down in the cup, where the pungency turns the chocolate tones pleasantly dry and smoky.
Judging by their comments, this Old Tavern Jamaica Blue Mountain peaberry was the clear favorite of the majority of the panelists, although they assigned slightly higher numbers for some cupping categories to the regular-bean Old Tavern also reviewed. Descriptions for this peaberry suggest a brightly yet sweetly acidy coffee, with floral high notes, full body, and good dimension. Some reviewers gushed ("Packs a punch! Love it"; "The nicest coffee of this Caribbean cupping. An outstanding flavor"); others simply approved or ho-hummed as they did with all of these coffees. I didn't pick up the hint of storage-related flatness that muted the regular-bean Old Tavern, although some reviewers did, groping to describe it with terms like "faded" and the like. I contributed some help to Alex Twyman, the farmer who developed the Old Tavern coffees, so my own assessment may be suspect, but on the basis of two rounds of rigorously blind cupping I agree strongly with the yea-sayers. I found this a clean, vibrant, subtly complete coffee.
The majority of panelists who had something to say about this coffee described still another classic Kona: a gentle acidity simultaneously sweet and bright, medium body, soft, balanced cup, clean aftertaste. Fewer grace notes were ascribed to this coffee than to some of the other mid-rated Konas, although this didn't dampen one panelist's ingenuity, who described the aroma as "donuts, [or] fresh-baked sponge-cake." Two dissenting panelists found fault with this coffee, both describing hard tones surfacing in aroma and aftertaste. On the other hand, several went out of their way to describe the aftertaste as "clean."
This Kauai peaberry cupped clean for most panelists, although three found a touch of herby or earthy hardness. The main complaint was lack of power: "mellow, well-balanced, [but] almost bland"; "flavor -- still waiting." Five of twelve panelists used the "bland" word. Nevertheless, several identified positive grace notes. "Dark chocolate overtones and very dry," said one.