Starbucks Mexican Chiapas
Occasionally I get caught up in the grasp of coffee-buying apathy. Invariably when this happens we end up running out of coffee, necessitating an urgent run to somewhere, anywhere to get coffee.
As result, two of the more recent coffees I’ve been drinking were Trader Joe’s Costa Rica Tarrazu (accessible and satisfactory, if not wholly enjoyable) and this bag of Starbucks’ Mexican Chiapas. While getting coffee at work one day, and knowing that I was buying a cup of Starbucks because we didn’t have any coffee at home for me to bring into the office, I saw this bag of one of their specialty coffees and decided to give it a roll. It was a double-bonus that it was from the same region as a Barrington coffee that I’d just finished.
This coffee is from the Chiapas region of Mexico, and was sourced from two specific farms, Santa Teresa and Guadalupe. The beans were grown at an elevation of 1000-1300 meters, and include the Catuai, Caturra, and Bourbon varietals. According to a post on their website, all of the coffee was grown under shade trees, though it doesn’t say this on the bag itself.
The most remarkable thing is the roast level of this coffee. Starbucks says that it’s their medium roast, and yet the beans are very dark and oily. To me, this looks like much more of a French roast, a level that carbonizes the bean to some extent, and releases more of the oils, creating a darker, sweeter cup of coffee. Dark roasts are, of course, typical of Starbucks approach to roasting, and is a style that really originated on the west coast with companies such as them and Peet’s. So I suppose that their’s is a subjective idea of a medium roast.
Contrast this to the approach that Barrington took with their Chiapas coffee. They used a City roast, and labeled it a “light roast” on the packaging. The beans are a light, milk-chocolate brown, with no oils coming through on any of them.
This is really a clash of two opposing coffee ideologies, the leveling approach as embodied in Starbucks’ dark roasts versus the embracing difference approach as captured in Barrington’s light roasts. But how does the difference play out in the cup?
Tasting Notes
The aromas in this coffee are very dark and roasty, with notes of molasses, toast, and vanilla bean. The palate is voluptuously smooth and soft with little acidity. There are flavors of hazelnuts, milk chocolate, vanilla wafers, toast, and a distant hint of black cherries. The finish is very dry and dark, with the flavors melding into a seamless, rather indistinct mash of molasses, nuts, and chocolate.
All in all, the flavors are okay, but lack much in the way of nuance. The overall impression was a melange of rich, dark, sweet flavors, and very smooth. It’s hard not to wonder what it would have been like at a lesser roast.
And here’s where the differences in Barrington’s approach play out relative to Starbucks. With Barrington’s lighter roast you get a much brighter cup of coffee, one that enables the nuances and layers in the coffee to shine. Starbucks’ approach leads to a more indistinctly, darkly flavored cup.
Is one better than the other? It’s really a question of preference, but if you like a coffee that is expressive of where it came from and what makes coffee from that place unique, then you should pick up the Barrington Coffee Chiapas. On the other hand, if you like heavily roasted coffees, then this one isn’t really much different than Starbucks’ other coffees, expect perhaps with less of a dark char flavor, and so I’d say give this one a roll.
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