South America Reviews

Lots of praise for the fruity nose, but the cup failed to excite and the aftertaste disappointed. Overall, panelists found little to either condemn or admire. I felt the coffee had been cleanly processed but still emerged flat.

A promising coffee shadowed by inconsistency. The good cups: sweet, full, deep, but alive with a pleasing shimmer of acidity. The bad: full and sweet but monotoned, flat, with a disturbing hint of astringency in aftertaste.

This complex, fruity, softly intense coffee unleashed a torrent of description from the panel. On aroma: "sweet cocoa, dried cherries"; "very strong & fruity." Descriptions of acidity included sweet, floral, fruity. Body: buttery yet light. Cup: fruity, sweet, "strong honey notes, very nice, very different." The odd intensity of this coffee, arresting yet restrained, disturbed two panelists: "Some may call this coffee pleasingly complex, but I find it a little wild," declared one. Count me in the pleasingly complex camp. I loved this coffee.

A distinctively sweet, fruity Colombia. The fruit hovers on the edge of ferment, but to my palate remains safely on the lush but chocolate-cherryish side of the defect divide. The nose is perfectly clean: sweet, light, cocoa-like, the acidity nicely balanced between sweet and dry tones, the body medium to fullish.

Rich with a low-toned, vibrant acidity. The body is creamily smooth, though a touch lighter than the heaviest-bodiedBrazils in the cupping. Here the sweet spice tones characteristic of natural Brazils are buoyant and floral, almost Yirgacheffe-like in their perfumes. The floral tones linger sweetly in the aftertaste.

Displays a rich, deeply matrixed acidity reminiscent of the best Sumatras. Although the cup is not quite as sweet and roundly ingratiating at first sip as some others in the cupping, the acidity sustains power as the cup cools, hence the somewhat higher rating for this coffee compared to those with comparable sweetness and body. A slight edginess to the acidity may indicate a scattering of cherries that were close to ferment as the coffee dried, but this shadow fault, if present at all, is so faint that it strikes me as a quibble. A fine coffee well-roasted.

A hard, nasty ferment mars an otherwise sweetly rich profile.

Very sharp, carbony cup, with little richness or sweetness. Both aroma and body seem burned off the coffee by the rather aggressive roast. I also tried this coffee as espresso. In the demitasse it remained sharp, but softened and sweetened a bit in milk.

A dullness, perhaps a shadow defect from rain-interrupted drying, shadows an otherwise splendidly sweet profile. The sweetness, enlivened by spice and chocolate, almost sneaks out from under the hardness at the finish, but never quite makes it. Too bad.

Either an over-aggressive roast or a drying-related defect in the green coffee deadens a promising profile. Satisfying body and richness, but little sweetness or nuance.

For me this coffee lacks sufficient sweetness to support its attractive tobacco, spice and floral notes. Sweetness in dry-processed coffees like this one comes from sustained contact of the bean with ripe fruit during drying. The profile-flattening lack of sweetness here may derive from too many green or unripe cherries in the mix.

An impressive tribute to the tactile dimension of taste: the body is smooth, buttery, alive yet full. The profile is sweet and deeply dimensioned with a pleasantly spicy tickle at its heart, but remains rather limited in range. The aftertaste reveals the merest hint of hardness.

Judged on aroma alone, this coffee easily would top the ratings. Intense, deeply dimensioned nut tones soar with an exhilarating sweetness. In the cup, however, things quiet down quickly. A heavy, low-toned acidity dominates a profile complicated by interesting spicy and smoky notes, but without much lift or dimension.

Some cups display a muted but disturbingly hard off-taste, probably a fault in the drying. The clean cups are low-key, sweet, with a pleasant, round earthiness and excellent resonance or dimension.

For an espresso this coffee is relatively light-roasted, allowing cup characteristics of the green coffee to emerge in the demitasse. The vanilla-nut tones characteristic of many Brazil dry-processed coffees weave pleasantly through the profile, appearing with particular clarity in aroma and aftertaste. Unfortunately, the herby, earthy sharpness of some dry-processed Brazils also surfaces, especially in the aftertaste. All earthy peccadilloes disappear in milk, however. The sharp, earthy tones mute, the nut tones bloom, and the entire profile relaxes and turns sweet yet forceful.

We couldn't make up our collective mind about this wet-processed coffee. I found it light and pleasantly bright -- appropriate to a good wet-processed coffee from lower altitudes. Several agreed, finding the acidity fruity and sweet. Others, however, reacted critically to the delicate profile: "Washed ... blah!" exclaimed one. Assessments of body were surprisingly varied, ranging from thin to buttery and full. Finally, two reviewers found flat-out fault with the profile: "dirty," complained one; "baggy" (flat, ropey taste), accused the other.

It wasn't entirely clear whether it was a thin, attenuated quality that put this semi-dry-processed coffee near the bottom of the cupping (three reviewers explicitly used the word "thin"), or an off-taste too subtle to be called a defect but unpleasant nonetheless. I called it a "baggy hardness"; three other panelists also used the word "hard" to describe it; others used close synonyms like harsh and bitter. On the positive side, several praised this coffee's sweetness.

Perhaps this coffee was betrayed by our sample roasting. Four of ten reviewers mentioned burned or smoky tastes that may have been owing to a rushed or overdeveloped roast. Two identified a fault that may be associated with the coffee and not the roast -- a slightly medicinal or harsh character. No grace notes were cited, although the term "soft" came up frequently as usual. I was definitely in the minority with this coffee: I felt it required patience, but developed nicely: "At first heavy but nondescript, but then a gentle, light, levitating sweetness dances off the top," I wrote.

"Clean, monolithic," one cupper wrote. "OK but same old same," wrote another. One of four coffees in the cupping for which no faults whatsoever were cited; on the other hand, this carefully prepared coffee elicited only mild praise. The acidity was predictably characterized as "soft" (five of ten reviewers). Words like sweet and caramelly popped up occasionally. Only one reviewer actually effused: "chocolaty and sweet; nutty flavor."