Barrington Coffee Roasting Co. Holiday Reserve Sulawesi Toraja

Barrington-Sulawesi_Toraja-Label

For the past few months I haven’t drunk much coffee. I haven’t ordered any in a while, in part because we decided to delve into some tea a bit. I know next-to-nothing about tea and so it’s been fun exploring some of the Chinese teas imported by Silk Road Teas. I sometimes think the nuances and delicacy are lost on me, as most often I feel like I have a pretty rudimentary palate. Whether or not this is true, and however much I was enjoying tea, I was pretty darned happy when a friend recently gave me a half-pound of Barrington coffee. It felt like coming home.

In fact, the extent of my excitement at trying this new coffee from Barrington was really an indication to me of how much I had been missing coffee. No offense to the tea enthusiasts out there. I like tea, but at heart I’m really more of a coffee person. It suits my personality more. Drinking coffee is relaxing, but because of the caffeine involved, and the process of making the coffee, it’s a more active kind of relaxation. I’m not very good at really sitting down and relaxing, and so coffee works best for me.

But hey! Not only was I excited to return to coffee and try an offering from Barrington that I hadn’t drunk before, but I was pretty amped to check out their new packaging. I’d heard about the new packaging from a friend of mine who knows the owners of Barrington pretty well, but hadn’t seen an example of it yet. Suffice to say, upon first inspection I think it’s a huge step forward for them.

In the past, I’ve bemoaned how uninformative their packaging was. The new packaging, which applies to their single-origin and limited edition coffees, is a big improvement. Each label includes the name of the coffee, including the estate or cooperative that produced it; the process used to make it (washed, semi-washed, sun dried, etc.); the country that the coffee comes from; and some tasting notes (for this coffee the label reads, “delicate spice…buttery body, toasted nut flavors”). Depending on the coffee in question, the label may also include information about the varietal(s), elevation, and roast.

All in all, I think this is a great change to their packaging, and is an ideal complement to their coffees, which are consistently very interesting and often downright exciting. I especially liked walking into a shop recently that sold a number of their coffees, and really feeling like I could make an educated decision about which to try.

As for this coffee, it was a special edition roast that they put out around the holidays. The coffee is from the Sulawesi region of Indonesia and was produced by the Petani Kopi Organik Toraja Cooperative. The beans were grown at an elevation of 4500-5500 feet in the Sesean Mountains region. The cooperative who grow and process the coffee is made up of 780 small-holders, each of whom farm just 1-1.5 hectares of land. The beans are semi-washed and sun dried.

The nose has notes of freshly baked bread, gingerbread cookies, subtle molasses tones, and sweet, earthy notes. It took a little while for the flavors in the nose to really open up, but once it did they were dense and enticing. The palate is rich with sweet fruits, raspberries, and cranberries. Alongside this are notes of oaky cinnamon and vanilla cake, riding atop a supple texture. The palate has a medium acidity, tempered just enough to highlight the fruit flavors. The finish is dry and almost cinnamony, with lightly acidic fruit melting away.

In their description of this coffee, Barrington states that it “comfortably rests in the realm of a supple armchair.” This is hard to argue with. The flavors are rich and enjoyable, and the coffee has a wonderfully textured body and mouthfeel. A nice coffee for a winter’s day.

Tags:
Indonesia, Sulawesi