Barrington Coffee Roasters Ethiopian Nekisse Micro Selection One
A couple of weeks ago I had the good fortune to pay a visit to Barrington Coffee Roasters, over in Lee, Mass. A long-time friend of mine worked there many years ago, and today his coffee shops work with Barrington for all of their coffee needs. Because the visit was something that he and I had talked about for ages, but simply hadn’t gotten around to, he was good enough to organize the field trip during my vacation week.
The timing was perfect. My thoughts had recently turned to questions of coffee seasonality and vintages (as captured in this post), thoughts that coincidentally are of great interest to the owners of Barrington Coffee. So I was pretty excited to visit them and talk about these ideas, so that I could learn more about the nuances that play into them and see what Barrington Coffee is doing along these lines.
The specialty coffee market seems like it’s in a funny place right now. Specialty coffee roasters are offering amazing, very carefully prepared coffees from great sources. These roasters are slowly building a landscape where lots of attention is paid to the details making up the coffee in your cup. The varietals, method of processing, elevation at which the cherries were grown, what micro-region the coffee is from, the background of the farmers or mill owners who produced the coffee beans, and so on. This level of detail gradually builds a story, one that is embodied by the coffee that you’re drinking. In other words, you’re not just drinking a single-origin Ethiopian coffee, but a single-origin, yellow-bourbon varietal, dry-processed, shade-grown coffee from a coop made up of 40 farmers who each farm 1-1.5 hectares of land apiece.
That’s a lot of information to digest, but is it the full story?
Herein lies the reason that my mind drifted towards questions of seasonality and vintages. Without question, there are pieces missing in the story making up specialty coffees today, details left out or as yet uncovered. And prominent among these are questions of how seasonality affects coffee, and whether vintage quality plays a role in the final quality of the coffee in your cup. I’m not content to know bits and pieces of a given coffee’s story, I want to know the nuances. And I’m not alone. Coffee can be wonderful and engaging, but leaving out the story is leaving out the romance.
The more I thought about this, the more I came to believe that the two concepts of seasonality and vintages are closely intertwined, and pulling them apart to look at separately is a bit thorny. In the end, this had a lot to do with the outcome of my discussion with Barrington co-owner Barth Anderson. He was generous enough to spend a few hours of his day discussing the topic, sampling both green and roasted coffees, and taking us on a tour of the roasters. But, in the end I felt like I was no closer to an understanding than I had been previously. The conversation took many twists and turns, followed numerous threads, I learned a ton, and – as the best conversations usually do – I ended up with more questions than answers, and certainly more questions than I had arrived with.
The gist of what I came away with was:
- Yes, seasonality and vintages play a large role in the quality of any given coffee. The weather patterns of a season have a huge impact both on the size of a crop and the quality, and therefore the same tree will not produce the same coffee two vintages in a row. The differences may be nuanced, but they are there.
- How weather affects the final flavor of a coffee is not clear. How does temperature affect the finished quality of a coffee? How about rainfall? Shade vs. sun-grown? Many questions remain to be thoroughly explored here.
- As a tree matures, the quality of its coffee will change. This will undoubtedly play into the quality of a coffee from one vintage to the next. Think of the role of old-growth vines in producing fine, vintage wines.
- Maintaining a coffee’s state for one or more years, so that you can directly assess the relative quality of different vintages, is a problematic and very tricky endeavor. Storage mechanisms and temperature, and ideal serving methods for vintage coffees remain wholly unanswered questions.
- As well, what coffees age better than others also remains an open question. Whether coffee from one region is more appropriate for aging than coffee from another is not entirely known, as well as what qualities a coffee needs to have in order to be age-worthy.
These are all questions that Barrington Coffee is very interested in, and has been exploring the answers to for several years. In their warehouse they’ve got bags and bags of beans representing several vintages of specially sealed coffees from several origins, representing the fruits of their awesome Landed Aging Program. And during our discussion, they brought out a wealth of information based on their experiences in aging coffees, specifically concerning which coffees age most gracefully, and what preparation methods best suit aged coffees. We also had the opportunity to talk about the profound varietal differences that can exist within single lots of coffee, and to begin exploring the question of which varietals are most suited to aging.
As I said, I came away with more questions than answers. But enough questions to fuel both further speculation and, hopefully, future conversations with the folks at Barrington Coffee. The conversation about aged coffees, vintages, and seasonal variation in quality is at a nascent stage, and while it may be taking place just in a small part of a small group of dedicated coffee enthusiasts, I believe that it’s an incredibly valuable conversation to have on a broader scale. Coffee deserves serious attention and consideration, and investigation into these questions, however hard they may be to answer, and however limited the apparent impact of their answers may be, is a relevant next step in elevating the level of that conversation.
As for this coffee, what is there to say? Lots! The Ethiopian Nekisse Micro Lot Selection One was harvested in December 2009 in the Sidamo/Shakiso region of southern Ethiopia. The trees grew at an altitude of 5904 feet, and the beans are made up of mixed heirloom varietals that were dry-processed. The beans came to Barrington by way of Ninety+Plus Coffee, a project begun by Joseph Brodsky whose mission is to deliver fine, unique small lots of coffee to specialty coffee roasters. They previously worked with Ninety+Plus to source their Ethiopian Beloya Selection Eight, which was magnificent.
Tasting Notes
The nose has notes of brown sugar, cinnamon, blackberries, and blueberries. The palate is fresh, with brightening acidity complementing a lithe, well-textured body sporting flavors of fresh berries, mint, kiwi, oak, and hazelnut. The finish has notes of bittersweet chocolate, blood oranges, and a subtle fruitiness, accompanied by a balancing acidity.
I tasted this coffee after preparing it in a french press. I also made it in a single-cup filter, and must say that the flavors came across quite different. Using the filter, the coffee was much more delicate, with brighter, strawberries. In the french press, the coffee was denser, with darker fruit flavors. At Barrington, we tasted the coffee from a vacuum coffeemaker–which is possibly the superior brewing technique. As a testament to the coffee’s quality, the coffee was delicious (albeit different) by all of these preparation techniques, so you can’t really go wrong here.
This Nekisse is carefully sourced, impeccably roasted, well-packaged (Barrington includes roast dates on their packaging now!), and presents wonderfully in the cup. The information they’ve included, both on the packaging and on their website, tells a good deal about the coffee, and gives you a fair notion of where this coffee came from, and why it is what it is.
All in all, a truly excellent cup of coffee. One that really opens up your taste buds, and your senses, and gets your thoughts perking first thing in the morning.
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Like your blog!!!
In my opinion comments on vintage differences can be done if a cupper collects the knowleage needed!
This was done by Annette Moldova from Square Mile Coffee
http://shop.squaremilecoffee.com/products/blackburn-estate-shades-of-september
/Morten