Top Ten Selling Coffees (Past 30-Days)

1. Daterra, Calabria Style Espresso

2. Kiamabara, Nyeri, Kenya

Elegant, silky blackberry sliding towards black currant notes overlaid with a fine veneer of blueberry. Bright acidity without edginess

Two of the most outstanding coffees from last year’s Kenya harvest (Dec 2008 – January 2009) came from the Kiamabara and Kagumoini wet mills (where the coffee seeds, which we call beans, are separated from their fruit and dried). Both produced several outstanding lots and we were able to have our pick from them. The two “factories,” as wet mills are called in Kenya, are close to each other, serve five villages and belong to the Mugaga Cooperative Society, which also runs the Kieni, Gathugu and Gatina factories. Kiamabara has 910 members; each farmer owns an average of just 200 trees. A tree in a smallholder plot produces one to two pounds of green coffee in a year, at best. The cooperative also produces tea, maize, bananas and macadamia. The Kiamabara green coffee lot held up beautifully through the storage and shipping phase, arriving to us this summer with no trace of woodiness from age. Even great coffee specially packaged to hold freshness in is often slightly affected by the journey from East Africa. The Kiamabara was unusually stable, even for Kenya coffee. We immediately froze it all, preserving that unclouded fresh flavor note.

Region: Nyeri district
Altitude: 5,000 – 6,000 ft.
Rainfall: Low to moderate – 59 inches yearly average
Soil: Volcanic loam
Arabica cultivar: Bourbon SL 28 and SL 34
Roast: Full Flavor Roast
Harvest: Dec. 2008

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3. Sumatra, Mandheling, Indonesia

The Sumatra Mandhelings we have been getting have all been exceptional. This lot has a harvest-freshness which I have been seeking for years. It is the best Sumatra, ideal for Full Flavor roast, I have been able to find since Terroir Coffee first started in 2003. It has the same deep butterscotch sweetness of our recent Sumatra, which scored 94 points in Coffee Review, but almost none of the age. Coffees from Sumatra are still only packaged in jute bags and they invariably suffer from storage in Sumatra’s port, Medan and the long voyage here. This one, however, made it through just about unscathed. Getting the kind of Sumatra I want is like getting fresh baked bread - you want it when it is hot out of the oven. This one, shipped right after the harvest, is as close as it gets! Needless to say, we have repackaged the coffee into vacuum-sealed bags and frozen them. Click here for more details on our unique packaging of green coffee protocols.

The coffee beans were harvested in the region of Lintong from various Arabica cultivars including some with ancient lineage going back to the early Dutch plantings of the early seventeenth century. It is a coffee which has been selected and processed under the specifications of Bill McAlpin, founder of La Minita. There is no other Sumatra Mandheling in the US that can hold a candle to it for craftsmanship, clarity and conviction of expression. Wonderfully clean and ripe, full of syrupy-bodied herbal butterscotch flavor.

Rated 94 points by Kenneth David's Coffee Review. To read the review click here.

Roast Style: Full Flavor Roast

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4. Daterra Reserve, Cerrado, Brazil

This is a wonderfully mellow coffee but with delicate clean fruit sweetness, giving a refined Beaujolais-like character to this coffee. Elusive hints of roses in the aroma. Very soft creamy notes of pecan. Medium body without any tang.

It was harvested from deep-rooted, low yield, very carefully hand-harvested Yellow Bourbon variety of Arabica. Rainforest Alliance Seal

The owner of Daterra, Luis Pascoal, is a key coffee visionary in the quality coffee movement who never tires of tweaking everything he does one notch up every year for the quality of the coffee and for his social and environmental policies.

Daterra is Rainforest Alliance certified!

Favorite of Food & Wine Magazine, March 2006

Roast Style: Full Flavor Roast

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5. Rwanda, Buf Coffee Mills

Sold Out!
Check Back for our new crops arriving!

Creamy milk and dark chocolate plus a touch of pecan laced with notes of red cherry and a trace of aromatic candied lemon.

Our 2008 crop scored 93 points in the Coffee Review. This new arrival is better. It is fresher, smoother and more nuanced.

Buf Coffee won three prizes in last year’s Cup of Excellence (the competition was not held this year but will, hopefully, resume next year)....

Buf Coffee is owned by Epiphanie Mukashyaka, a survivor of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and an inspiration to Rwandan women for her dynamic role in the development of specialty coffee. Our lot is a blend of coffees from two of her mills, a few dozen miles distant from each other, in the south-southwestern section of Rwanda. Both are on the eastern flank of a mountain chain dotted with tiny farms at between 5,250 feet and 6,250 feet in altitude that runs from Uganda in the north to Burundi in the south. The Nyarusiza mill is in Gikongoro province while Nkongoro is in adjoining Butare province. The soil in both areas is clay mixed with sand and rainfall is very moderate, averaging 55 inches per year. Strictly heirloom Bourbon coffee trees are grown. While I did not visit these mills when I visited Rwanda last August, I was in the region; click here to see my photographs, with comments, of the coffee-growing area around Butare.

Many hundreds of farmers sell their coffee cherry to the well-run Buf Coffee mills. A farmer typically has between 200 to 1000 coffee trees, each producing well under one pound of green coffee to be roasted (another minimum 15% weight loss). The mill depulps the coffee fruit, then removes all fruit residue still coating the beans by fermentation lasting about twenty four hours, then washes off all fruit and simultaneously separates the best, densest beans by use of turbulent water flow and gravity through concrete channels. The beans are finally soaked for another set of hours and then dried on raised racks over a period of about a week. This is painstaking work that must be done precisely to preserve the unique aromatics imparted to the coffee beans by that region's terroir.

6. La Minita Del Sol, Tarrazu, Costa Rica

La Minita first appeared in 1988 when I introduced it in The Coffee Connection. It has been a consistent favorite since then. This year it has gotten better. In the past La Minita has been sun dried for the first day and then very carefully mechanically dried the rest of the way (from 65% moisture down to about 10.5%). This was to insure consistency regardless of weather conditions. The farm is now taking that risk and extra time – it takes days and constant attention to sun dry, not hours - with a small portion of their offering and it is La Minita del Sol.

We have found that sun drying adds a more rounded, sweeter mouth-coating body to an already exceptional coffee. The subtle fruit component is more present as well. While more expensive to produce we feel this is well worth it and hope you agree!

One of the key differences between La Minita and other farm coffees is the selectivity applied. While many farm’s “first” (best quality) constitute between 60% of their production after milling, La Minita selects slightly over 20%, eliminating all – or as close as you can get to “all!” - defects which might blemish your cup.

Full bodied, sparkling acidity, yet so smooth from hot to stone cold. Maple syrup, nuts and hint of very ripe peaches.

No pesticides or herbicides are used.
Roast Style: Full Flavor Roast

http://www.laminita.com/

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7. Konga Co-op, Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia

Certified Organic!

The Konga Cooperative has 1683 farmers of which 133 are female heads of family. The average size of a farm is 1.25 acres on which coffee and various foods for the local market are grown. Yirgacheffe is amazingly lush with vegetation. The coffee is grown at over 6,000 feet in altitude. This Konga also has that lush full-bodied apricot core with exceptionally pronounced clarity and sweetness.

Yirgacheffe is one of the great aromatic coffees of the world. It is often used in the finest Italian espresso blends, such as Illy, to add a critical floral element. The scientist- quality coffee pioneer Ernesto Illy (Illy Coffee) stated at the SCAA Conference in Boston, 2003 that the coffee of this region shared an aromatic component found in Darjeeling tea and Chanel #5.

Favorite of Food & Wine Magazine, March 2006

Roast Style: Full Flavor Roast
Harvest: 2006
Altitude: over 6,000 feet
Soil: volcanic
Arabica Variety: Ethiopica

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8. Cerise Espresso

We have officially sold out of Cerise for this season! Stay tuned for new espresso blends coming soon!

Awarded 92 Points in the Coffee Review!

Cerise, the first offering in our Barista series!
Developed in cooperation with Nik Krankl of Taste Coffee House in Newton Massachusetts.

Nik worked closely with George and Jenny to develop this competition level espresso. As part of our new Barista Espresso Series, we gave Nik creative liberty to name the espresso and design the label. This is the blend Nik used for both the for the 2010 regional and national barista competitions, placing second and twelfth respectively.

A syrupy-bodied cup full of dried cherries, milk chocolate, caramel and toasted almonds.

The blend is a post roast blend of of Kenyan, Colombian & Brazilian espressos.

Nik's extraction suggestion is to pull the shot at 202ºF and nine (9) Bars pressure, using 19 grams espresso for 24 grams of beverage weight, resulting in a classic Ristretto of 12% concentration (TDS) at 19.5% Extraction Yield.
Sweet and elegant, enjoy!

9. Grand Cru Kenya: Mamuto, Kirinyaga

Check back for the next roast date in October!

When I first encountered Mamuto, I believe it was the best lot auctioned in Kenya that year. (All Kenyan coffee lots were auctioned through 2006; in 2008 the system was "liberalized," permitting direct sales as well as auction coffee) In our first year of roasting this coffee, Mamuto received Coffee Review's first-ever score over 95. Mamuto has scored 96, 97 and 96 Points respectively for crops from 2006, 2007 and 2008. We now have Mamuto's best lot from the most recent harvest. We purchased this lot directly and without hesitation; it was, again, one of the most outstanding lots we tried this past buying season and we have been privileged to always cup the cream of the crop!

Taking inspiration from their family, Mr. Mathagu explained to me, he and his wife named the farm by combining the first two letters from three words: his name, Mathagu, as the father; Muthoni, his wife's maiden name, as mother; and toto, meaning child or children in Swahili: thus Mamuto. Mr. and Mrs. Mathagu have six children - three boys, three girls

Farmer: Walter Paul and Muthoni Mathagu
Region: Kirinyaga
Altitude: 5,000 ft.
Rainfall: Low to moderate+
Soil: Volcanic loam
Arabica variety: Bourbon Sl 28 and SL 34
Size of Farm: 21 acres total; 13 acres of coffee
Roast: Full Flavor

Please click here to view more images of this coffee farm.

Please Note:
1) Orders need to be placed for our Limited Edition Coffees by 8:00 am Eastern Time
2) Orders received will not be shipped until the ROAST DATE indicated per the schedule; and
3) Orders received that include REGULAR COFFEE items in addition to scheduled Limited Edition coffees will be shipped on the date that the limited coffee is roasted to minimize your shipping cost, UNLESS you leave a message in the Notes Box indicating you want us to ship your regular coffee separately.

10. Kiamariga, Nyeri, Kenya

Next Roast September 27th!

Kiamariga is a small, spectacular lot which we will roast from time to time. The cup is saturated with immaculately transparent perfectly ripe succulent blackberry subtly layered with traces of plum and dark red cherries. It is without trace of astringency, having great layered depth and a velvet-soft sweetly disappearing finish - a Kenya of unforced power, full body and great elegance. It is, as with all our Terroir coffees, kept in perfect condition with our special storage system.

The Kiamariga Cooperative mill is about 100 miles north of Nairobi in the great coffee-growing Nyeri district. It serves over one thousand small growers who live nearby at around five thousand feet in altitude on the edge of the Mt. Kenya forest. The average farm size is a half acre with an average of 250 trees each. I visited Solomon Dei, a member of Kiamariga, at his farm, seen on right. The Kiamariga mill is seen below, early in the morning. The green coffee, drying on racks, is still covered in yellow plastic to protect from morning dew and possible rainfall overnight. Fermentation tanks with roofs protecting from the sun are on the left, and curing of recently dried coffee is in the large structure to the right, open on the sides for proper ventilation. Full flavor roasted.

Region: Nyeri
Altitude: 5,000+ ft.
Rainfall: moderate
Soil: Volcanic loam
Arabica variety: Bourbon SL 28 and SL 34
Average size of farms: 0.5 acres

Please Note:
1) Orders need to be placed for our Limited Edition Coffees by 8:00 am Eastern Time
2) Orders received will not be shipped until the ROAST DATE indicated per the schedule; and
3) Orders received that include REGULAR COFFEE items in addition to scheduled Limited Edition coffees will be shipped on the date that the limited coffee is roasted to minimize your shipping cost, UNLESS you leave a message in the Notes Box indicating you want us to ship your regular coffee separately.