Green Reviews

Winner in the 2000 Specialty Coffee Association of Panama Cupping Event. Gently lively acidity rides a full, buttery body toward a splendid, complex, wine-toned finish.

A luxuriously sweet, full, suavely rounded cup enlivened by nut and spice tones and a tickle of flowers. "Rich, saturated butter," exclaimed one panelist. Slightly sharp when hot, but as the cup cools the bitter edge swoons into the enveloping sweetness.

Panelists found this coffee interesting but ambiguous. They were attracted by its combination of nuanced, caramelly softness and bright, aggressive acidity; put off by a smoky, slightly bitter pungency that hinted at a drying fault.

Clear, dry fruit that reads pleasingly as cocoa graces this agreeable but understated coffee. Some panelists praised its gentle complexity; others found the cup too gentle.

A paradoxical coffee: A slight bitter edge (drying fault?) led two panelists to dismiss this coffee; the majority praised its sweetness and depth and either overlooked the shadow bitterness or read it as an agreeable pungency.

Soft, low-key coffee with a twisty undercurrent of dark vegetative notes: wood or grass at worst; at best spice, tobacco or smoke. I found that, as the cup cooled, these notes sweetened pleasantly toward cocoa and cedar.

The panel put this light-bodied coffee somewhere between bland and defective. Four panelists reported at least one cup of the several they sampled displayed defective aromatics, their descriptions ranging from soapy to beefy to sour. Apparently I was lucky: all of my cups were light-footed but sweetly acidy and agreeable.

This rather wild coffee attracted a split vote. The chocolate-toned aroma impressed some panelists, but the cup turned rather rough and harsh as it cooled. Positive descriptions of aromatics ranged from fruit to chocolate. Negative or neutral: earthy, tobaccoey, "beef broth."

A splendidly smooth Harrar with persistent, understated power. There is plenty going on in the nose, particularly fruit, but the real strength of this coffee is its smooth, supple presence, particularly as it cools. "It is what it says it is -- friendly, honest, easy to read, pleasant & enjoyable, [though] not sophisticated," concluded one panelist. I loved this coffee, and found its resonant roundness sufficiently sophisticated, even elegant.

Complex and alive with nuance: twisty dried fruit tones ("dried apricot" specified one panelist; "prune" suggested another), spice, chocolate, berries. Sweet, rich, and utterly engrossing in its teasing labyrinth of aromatics.

A flawed coffee, but complex and intriguing in its faults. Every panelist except one cited defects, but the intrigue of the defects inspired them to refined description. "Potatoey, soapy," said one; "Old, wood-pulp flavor," another. I suspect that this pleasantly sweet, light coffee attracted some serious mustiness or mould during drying.

A complexly imbalanced cup. Virtually everyone agreed the aroma was pleasantly floral and fruity ("melon" one panelist specified) and the body robust, but the eccentric sensations that emerged in the cup as it cooled attracted a variety of vegetable and largely negative adjectives, among them grassy, herbal, wheaty, and tobaccoey.

Hints at the exhilaratingly light, bright, fruity, berryish delicacy of the finest Yemen Ismaili. Unfortunately that light, bright, fruity delicacy is muted by a baggy dullness.

Yemen coffees are famous for their wild unpredictability, from bag to bag and even cup to cup. This split-vote coffee appears to support that generalization. Several panelists discovered in it a variety of attractive, complexly nuanced Yemen virtues: chocolate, fruit, wine, berries. Others found it musty and flat, though still pleasantly rich.

Richly acidy, solid, straightforward, this mocha distinguished itself less by its fruity nuance than by its general dimension and boldness: "good intensity & depth," wrote one panelist; "good concentration & complexity," echoed another. Shimmers of fruit and chocolate simplify as the cup cools.

An absolutely remarkable coffee. Replete with glistening, kaleidoscopic nuance of fruit: clean, sweet, densely rich blueberry, wine, flowers, spice. Bright and spirited yet deeply resonant; balanced, complete. A coffee this complex and alive with fruit almost necessarily teeters on the edge of slight ferment, but most of the panelists could have cared less. It would be like criticizing Michelangelo because he left some chisel marks on the base of a sculpture.

Is this Ethiopia smooth, complex and gently authoritative, or slightly hard, grassy, and astringent? Either the panelists couldn 't make up their minds on this coffee or the coffee couldn 't make up its own mind. "Sweet, caramel, rootbeer," wrote another; but "cooled to unremarkable and astringent." I found this coffee chocolaty and rich on first impression, but a touch hard underneath, with a faintly bitter finish.

Panelists described a pleasant Ethiopia coffee with hints of citrus, spice, and perhaps something less pleasant: a faint but disturbing undertone described by one panelist as metallic, by another as medicinal, another as baggy or ropelike. Perhaps a slight fault in the drying.

The nutty, sweet-herbal-toned aroma promised intrigue, but most panelists felt the cup disappointed: the acidity was a touch harsh, the flavor rather rough, the aftertaste astringent. Perhaps too much green, unripe coffee fruit made it to the bag.

Smooth, embellished with delicate fruit and floral tones, and understated -- apparently too understated for the panel. The herbal and spice notes in the aroma faded and turned vaguely tealike as the cup cooled. "Nice but unremarkable," one panelist wrote. "The interesting aroma was somewhat lost in the cup."