Gimme! Coffee Papua New Guinea Sigri Estate
Here’s what I’ve been loving about this coffee: it’s flexibility. Normally I drink coffee black. But sometimes it can be a real treat to douse it with some half-and-half, very much like dessert (but best for breakfast!). This coffee takes exceedingly well to both, and expresses a very distinct personally both ways.
Papua New Guinea is an island off the north coast of Australia. As they do with many of their western or Pacific coffees, Gimme roasts this quite dark, a 5 on their 1-5 scale. I get the distinct impression that in their eyes coffees from this world best express themselves via a dark roast. Of the “Pacific Islands” coffees that they currently offer, three of the four are roasted to a 5, and the other to a 4. I can’t help but wondering if this is an approach taken by most roasters or not, and if so whether it is indicative of the unique terroir of coffees from this part of the world. Is there something about Pacific coffees that is best expressed by dark roasting?
The Sigri Estate coffee is one of the single-origin coffees from Gimme. The trees are grown at an altitude of 6000 feet in a soil of humic brown clay in the Wahgi Valley of Papua New Guinea’s Western Highlands Province. The varietal grown is called Kent (a varietal that is new to my ears) and the beans are washed.
As the roast indicates, this coffee is very dark. I don’t get much fruit on the nose. Instead there is smoke and a sense of depth and roastiness. This coffee smells like a cup of serious coffee. On the palate the coffee is much brighter. There’s some liquorice, spices (curry and cinnamon), nearly some raspberries, the roastiness comes back strong, and the acidity is very muted. The finish has a nice cocoa flavor, chocolate laced with a pleasant bitterness.
Gimme’s tasting notes for this coffee say that the aftertaste is “Sweet with a big behind”, and I think that, cheekiness aside, this sums the coffee up nicely. From start to finish the coffee gets better and better. Up front it gives off the promise of a great get-you-up-in-the-morning cup of coffee, midway the flavors begin to open up on your palate, and it finishes with a strong, full flavor that solidly lingers on your palate between sips. This is not a nuanced coffee, by any means. It is more like flourless chocolate cake, just full of serious depth of flavor, no fooling around.
And then, when you add cream to it, it’s like flourless chocolate cake with chocolate frosting on top, or vanilla ice cream on the side. Totally indulgent and over-the-top, but in the best way.
I woudn’t want to drink such bold every day, but it’s been a real pleasure diving into this coffee this week. This is a good interlude between the Intelligentsia coffees we were drinking before, and the Nicaragua Linda Vista (also from Gimme!) that is sitting in the cupboard for when the Papua New Guinea is done.
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