Archive for May, 2010
Stumptown Coffee Roasters Guatemala Bella Carmona
Lately, my coffee thoughts have been turned to ideas of seasonality. I’ve become curious about how seasonality affects the coffees available to roasters, what the seasons for coffee are, who is harvesting where and when, and whether each region (Africa, Latin America, etc.) harvests all of their varietals at one time, or if there are multiple harvests in a given year (in a given place).
As consumers, we’re seldom given much insight into the seasonal nature of coffee. Yet, as an agricultural product, coffee is based on the progress of a plant throughout the course of a specific growing season. It is not uncommon for roasters to offer coffees from Ethiopia, Kenya, or Colombia year-round, as though the coffee harvests in these places never ends.
Contrast this with wine, a similar agricultural product, whose production and marketing are heavily vintage-driven. Bottles of wine are labeled with the year that the grapes were grown in, alongside information about where the grapes were grown. Vintages are assessed, evaluated, and prognosticated upon on a country-by-country, region-by-region basis. Year-to-year vintages are evaluated relative to one another, and prices rise and fall accordingly. In the case of wines such as vintage Port, Sauternes, or Bordeaux, the wines are tasted while still maturing in barrels, evaluated long before they are bottled.
With rare exceptions, the specialty coffee world has done little in this regard. If you look at the information accompanying a coffee from Barrington Coffee Roasters, they will tell you roughly when the beans were harvested (e.g. “2009 crop (late 2009 harvest)”. Intelligentsia at one point had a website at the url inseason.com, that would tell you which coffees they were offering from the most recent harvest. This has now been folded into their existing website, and is featured somewhat prominently on their home page. Stumptown, who produced this coffee, will sometimes include information about when a coffee harvest.
This is a small sample of the finest specialty coffee roasters in the country, and the treatment given the notion of seasonality is highly uneven. I can guess at some of the reasons for this, but I have to admit to not knowing the full story. It is one mystery of coffee production that I would love to learn more about.
But, I do think it’s reasonable to expect producers such as these to include more (and more consistent) information about the seasonal nature of their coffees. Especially in the case of their small-lot, single-origin coffees, where they often include several pieces of information about provenance, varietal(s), processing methods, etc. Including information about the harvest strikes me as a logical step from here.
Just imagine how cool it would be to go to a roaster’s site and be able to learn information about that season’s harvest in Africa, Indonesia, Latin America, etc. Hearing how the many growers they work with coped with the seasons and harvest, and how the unique elements of that year’s growing season(s) play out in the cup. To read knowledgeable comparisons of one vintage of Kenyan coffee versus another. In particular, this would help to elucidate the benefits of one growing area versus another in the same season. For example, we could learn why higher-altitude slopes produce better coffee relative to lower slopes, and whether growing coffee at this location serves as a buffer against an especially warm growing season (e.g. “the unusually warm temperatures in the Nyeri region led to early ripening for coffees on the lower slopes, whereas those at higher altitudes ripened more slowly and steadily, resulting in cherries that were at the perfect stride of maturity when the harvest began”). For an example, check out this harvest report from Ridge’s Monte Bello vineyard. Doesn’t that description of the growing season get you excited to try the wines, to see how the growing season plays out in their finished wine?
In the end, here are the things I’m most interested in regarding coffee and seasonality:
- What are the typical growing seasons for each country, and do they differ by region within a specific country?
- When are coffee cherries typically harvested in each country, and what factors influence an earlier or later harvest season?
- How are different growing areas and conditions affected by seasonal weather patterns? How do current plantings reflect responses to the weather each coffee producing region experiences?
- How do vintages relate to one another? Are vintages consistent year-to-year in terms of quality? Quantity? If not, how do they differ?
- Can coffees from all vintages/countries/varietals improve with age? Or only coffees from especially good vintages/countries/varietals? (I’m looking at you Barrington Coffee to help with this question…)
I’m sure there are other questions, but those seem like good starting points!
Tasting Notes
The Bella Carmona wet mill that produced the coffee I’m writing about here, is situated in Antigua, at a mid-level elevation of 1500-1650 meters above sea level. Antigua is located in central Guatemala, a ways south-east from Huehuetenango, one of the country’s other prominent coffee growing regions. Because of its lower elevation, relative to Huehuetenango, coffees from this region are typically harvested earlier, and arrive in roasters’ hands earlier than those from other regions in the country.
The Zelaya family purchased the Bella Carmona wet mill in 1908, and it is currently owned third generation coffee farmer Maria Zelaya. Stumptown works closely with the mill to source some of their more notable Guatemalan coffees.
In this case, they received coffees from several farms surrounding the mill, and assembled this coffee by blending the beans together in varying quantities. The farms are located in the Duenas, Ciudad Vieja, and Alotenango counties on the slopes of the Volcan de Agua. Here the coffees are grown under a canopy of Gravilea trees. Once harvested, they are transferred to the mill, mechanically washed, and then dried on raised patios.
The Actual Tasting Notes
The nose is bright with floral citrus notes, milk chocolate, and herbal notes of lavender and heather. The mouthfeel is lithe with glittering, welcoming acidity. The flavors are bright and lively, with a sweet undertone. Orange zest and candied lemon contrast nicely with nutty flavors of light caramel and melted chocolate, underscored by a hint of berryish flavors. The finish is dry and citrusy.
This is a great afternoon coffee, full of the bright flavors that I associate with Latin American coffees, brought out well by the light/medium roast that Stumptown used. When I ordered this it was the only Latin American coffee that they were offering. Since then (only a week ago), they’ve added a couple more Guatemalan coffees, so it looks like they’re receiving and processing more from the most recent harvest. Perhaps this begins to answer some of my speculation about seasonality.
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Rosebank 20-Year SWMS Cask 25.50
The “connoisseur” in me often thinks that whiskies from closed distilleries represent the holy grail. That tasting a whisky from one of these distilleries is almost like tasting a piece of history, snatching a fragment of the past from the jaws of time. No doubt, this is a distinctly romantic notion. But an exciting one nonetheless.
In part, the idea, and the excitement surrounding it, stems from scarcity: whiskies from closed distilleries become rarer by the day. Each year that passes is one year farther from when they shut their doors for the last time, and the number of barrels or bottles in existence steadily dwindles. Independent bottlers work hard to secure barrels of this increasingly unique whisky, and collectors race against one another to stow away bottles.
So, scarcity breeds romanticism, and in some cases the result is difficult to find and wildly priced whiskies. Just look at recent bottlings of Port Ellen or Brora, two long-since closed distilleries prized by whisky enthusiasts today. Bottles of these distilleries’ whisky, now reaching 30-years old, fetch $300-$400. Not only are they pricey, but there are only a handful of them to go around. The reputation of these whiskies precedes them, but in (sadly) too many cases their price tag puts them out of reach of most folks.
Herein lies one of the best elements of whiskies from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. Not only do they consistently bottle stellar whiskies from a great range of distilleries – all of which are single-cask and non-chill-filtered -, but they regularly offer rare and hard to find gems at (all things considered) reasonable prices. Every couple of months when their list of available bottlings is sent out, it invariably includes at least a couple from closed distilleries. Alongside these are the whiskies offered from distilleries rarely, if ever, seen in independent bottlings. Take, for example, the Glen Elgin that I tried recently.That the Society makes a point of offering bottlings from closed distilleries is a wonderfully bittersweet pleasure. On the one hand is the joy of tasting such a unique and tasty whisky. On the other is the awareness that these opportunities are increasingly limited.
This bottle of whisky is an excellent example. Rosebank closed in May of 1993, 153 years after being founded by one James Rankine. Alongside St. Magdalene, Rosebank was one of the most highly regarded Lowland malts, and sadly both are closed today (St. Magdalene closed in 1983). This particular whisky was distilled in April 1989, and spent 20 years aging in a refill bourbon hogshead before being bottled at a cask-strength of 56.7%.
Tasting Notes
This Rosebank is darker than others I’ve had, certainly a result of its greater age. The color is of lustrous, polished gold. The nose has notes of heather, sugared citrus, custard, lemon curd, and a hint of vanilla bean. The palate is rich and velvety, with mouth-coatingly sweet layers of poached apples and pears, custard, creme anglaise, and a hint of light caramel, wispy smoke, riding atop a viscous, malty body. The whisky really shines on the finish, with increasingly deep flavors of caramelized sugars. Think tasting the flavors of turbinado sugar as it’s slowly melted atop a creme brulee, finishing with just a hint of dark, burnt sugar.
What I enjoyed most about this whisky was the way in which the flavors deepened and opened up from the nose, through the palate, and on to the finish. The other Rosebank that I’ve tried recently was not quite as old, and not nearly as rich. It had a much stronger citrus and heather element taking place. It was excellent, and this bottle represents another side of this (sadly closed) distillery’s excellent whisky.
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Bayerischer Bahnhof Leipziger Gose
Alongside Berliner Weisse, Gose (pronounced “goes-uh”, two syllables) is one of a few styles of German beer that all but disappeared during the 20th century, a list that also includes Lichtenhainer and Grätzer. Also similar to Berliner Weisse, Gose was a style whose production was limited to a specific place, in this case the area surrounding the town of Leipzig in central Germany. Today, there are only two breweries producing Gose, and Bayerischer Bahnhof is both the largest and the only one exporting their beer to the U.S.
In his book Brewing With Wheat, Stan Hieronymous describes Gose as “a sour wheat beer spiced with coriander and salt.” Along with these ingredients (themselves unusual for German beer), Gose brewers used lactic acid bacteria, resulting in the sourness he refers to. Whether or not spontaneous fermentation was used farther back in the history of brewing this style is not known, but it is certainly possible in light of historical descriptions of the beer.
Since the end of World War II, production of Gose has been extremely limited if it took place at all. In 2000 the Bayerischer Bahnhof Gasthaus and Gose Brauerei began producing in a renovated historic train station, and Gose accounts for 30% of the beer that they produce annually.
Their Gose is brewed to an original gravity of 1.044, finishing with an ABV of 4.5%. Wheat and pilsner malts are used, along with Northern Brewer hops to the tune of 10 IBUs, salt, coriander, and lactic acid bacteria which is added prior to the boil. The brewery uses a weizen yeast and a cool fermentation in cylindro-conical tanks to reduce the amount of esters and phenols produced by the yeast. The bottled beer is bottle-conditioned to achieve 2.5 volumes of CO2.
Tasting Notes
The beer pours slightly hazy and pale golden in color with ample carbonation that builds up a fluffy white head. The foam drops somewhat quickly, leaving little lacing on the glass. The nose is both bright and earthy, with notes of fresh baked bread, citrus, gentle hops, and malt. The palate is light bodied with medium carbonation. The flavors are made up of leafy, herbal hops, citrus, wheat bread, a soft maltiness, and a slight sourness akin to a young lambic. Quite refreshing and very enjoyable on this warm day that I’m trying it. The finish is long-lasting with a gentle sourness, along with citrus, earthy hops and cereal notes.
Good summer beer. Not quite as refreshing as a berliner weisse, but very enjoyable on a warm day. Highly recommended if you’re a fan of wheat beers and interested in trying something that’s a fair way off the beaten path.