Intelligentsia Los Inmortales, El Salvador
I was really looking forward to getting a chance to try this coffee. With the Gimme! coffee we had running low, I went ahead and ordered a couple pounds of coffee from Intelligentsia, the Los Inmortales El Salvador and the Itzamna Guatemala. I tell you, I think it’s pretty awesome that they (and Terroir does this also) roast the coffee on the same day that they ship it to you. So basically, right now I’m drinking coffee that was roasted only 5 days ago, which I’m pretty happy with.
Here’s the details on this coffee (from the Intelligentsia website):
- Location: Santa Ana, La Libertad
- Varietal: Bourbon
- Altitude: 1450-1700m
- Harvest: January-March
Intelligentsia says that this coffee is their attempt to “create the most delicious and convincing coffee that we can to represent El Salvador.” To do this, they blend together beans from four different farms:
- Finca Malacara – Guillermo Alvarez, located in Santa Ana
- Finca El Cerro – Eduardo Alvarez, located in Santa Ana
- Finca Bosque Lya – Jose Molina and family, located in Santa Ana
- Finca Matalapa – Vicky Dalton-Diaz, located in La Libertad
All of these are part of Intelligentsia’s collection of Direct Trade coffees.
The first thing I noticed is that this is is a super smooth coffee. The second thing that stood out were the aromas when I was making this – very strong notes of grain, toast, and spices such as cinnamon. I find the coffee to be very nutty with a bit of caramel floating around in it and a very slight hint of fruit, subtle melon maybe. It is not overly acidic, instead the acidity is quite restrained. When the coffee hits your taste buds the acidity comes in to brighten things up, turn on the lights so to speak, but then steps back to let the flavors take the spotlight. I do think this is a pretty harmonious cup of coffee, very easy to drink.
Note: What I’m struck by here is a really interesting comparison to wine, specifically to the ideas embodied in different bottlings put out by a top producer. Take Saintsbury for instance, the Russian River Valley pinot noir producer. They have their Garnet bottling, Carneros Pinot Noir, and then they get into a series of single-vineyard bottlings, such as the Brown Ranch or Lee Vineyard pinot noirs. Each of these is an ascending step up the ladder of site-specificity. The Carneros Garnet allows them a lot of latitude in composing the wine, specifically in terms of the percentage of pinot noir grapes that they use. But the large majority of the grapes need to come from Carneros. Then you get into the Carneros Pinot Noir, and this entails a greater amount of pinot noir grapes (greater than 75%), and they use this opportunity, or constraint, to produce a differently styled wine, one that they feel speaks more of the grape that it takes its name from (pinot noir). And lastly you get the single-vineyard bottlings, where each wine uniquely represents the very specific location that the grapes come from. Depending on the size of the vineyard, it could be argued that the specificity of the site varies and is perhaps more unique. The blending possibilities will be greater if a winemaker can blend grapes from a 3 acre vineyard parcel as opposed to a 1 acre parcel.
In the end, Saintsbury is using a series of bottlings to increasingly focus on the site-specificity of the pinot noir grape. It doesn’t necessarily mean that one of their single-vineyard bottlings is a better wine than their Garnet bottling, but it is more unique. You know specifically where those grapes came from and who grew them.
I see roasters such as Intelligentsia adopting this same approach. They have their house blends, and then they have blends such as this Los Inmortales that are blends from a small selection of farms in a single country, where the roaster “takes the most compelling and attractive characteristics from multiple growing regions and combines them to create a complete, harmonious, and thoroughly delicious culinary masterpiece.” And then they also offer farms that represent a single, unique farm, such as the Hacienda La Esmerelda offering.
Clearly, coffee roasters are emulating a lot of ideas, whether consciously or not, from the world of wine. And it is logical in that it highlights how similar these two products are to one another.
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