Gimme Coffee Ethiopia Amaro Gayo Organic
I’ve been thinking about coffee quite a bit the past two days. It’s been a dominant theme in my thoughts, spurred in part by a conversation that I had about Intelligentsia Coffee with a co-worker. Without realizing it, I haven’t had Intelligentsia coffee for a long time. In the meantime I’ve tasted a bunch of great coffees, no doubt. But there is something about Intelligentsia that really captured my imagination back when I first began getting more serious about understanding coffee.
And so while I was sipping on this cup of coffee from Gimme, I began to think about why roasters such as Stumptown, Intelligentsia, Counter Culture, and Gimme get me so excited about coffee. It’s not necessarily that their coffees are better than any other roasters’. And it’s not the cool-factor that surrounds certain of them, Stumptown perhaps the most. No, it’s neither of those.
What is so exciting about these roasters is how passionate they are about coffee and the people who grow it. If you read their websites, and follow their blogs, what jumps out of the pages is enthusiasm for finding great coffees, establishing relationships with the farmers that grow them, and enriching the exchange between grower, roaster, and the home coffee maker. This kind of enthusiasm is always compelling to me. Whether it is a brewer, a winemaker, or coffee roaster the consistent theme in the people and companies that hold my attention is their commitment to the culture in which they operate.
Gimme is a great example. Yes, they source great coffees. And yes, they do a great job of roasting them. But they also work very hard to reach out to their customers, to educate them about where the coffees come from, the lives of the people who farmed them, and why the coffees taste the way they taste. They fill in the gaps between the many stories that come together to make up the culture of coffee. Through their words you can learn so much about the tapestry of coffee.
So while other coffee roasters also produce very good, and often great, coffees, it’s the companies who make this extra effort that make me interested in coffee at all. Without them, coffee would be another faceless, colorless product.
So what is the story behind this coffee? The beans were farmed in the Amaro Mountains in the Sidamo region of Ethiopia and processed at the Amaro Gayo mill. This mill is owned by Asnakech Thomas, the only female owner of a coffee mill in all of Ethiopia. Not only that, but she’s also the only female exporter in Ethiopia, and owns 250 hectares of coffee farmland as well. The result is that she has near complete control over the coffee that she produces, from farming to exporting.
This coffee was grown organically, and is wet-processed and sun-dried, as is typical for Ethiopia.
The nose has compelling notes of vanilla, coconut, blueberries, and huckleberries. One of the most wonderfully fragrant coffees I’ve had! The palate has a warm, mellow, slightly voluptuous body with a rind of acidity. Flavors of cocoa,raspberries, and blueberries are underscored by a hint of caramel. The finish is somewhat minty, with blueberries once again prominent.
What a remarkably enjoyable cup of coffee, the kind that just brings a smile to your face first thing in the morning. The berry flavors are very reminiscent of other Ethiopian coffees I’ve had, in particular a couple from Barrington Coffee Roasters. Naturally, my mind ends up roaming back to the questions I’ve been mulling over for so long regarding the role of terroir in coffee. A subject that I’ll have to come back to another time…
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