Barrington Coffee Roasting Co. Aged El Salvador Finca Cerro Las Ranas 2006

Nathan — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:40:06 +0000

The first roaster I saw offering aged coffee was George Howell’s Terroir Coffee, who offered an aged Indonesian that sounded quite exciting. At the time I had never heard of such a thing…aged coffee? Since then I’ve seen aged coffees offered by a couple of roasters, but it’s a pretty rare offering overall, and I can only think of a couple of roasters I’ve seen them from.

This coffee is unique in that not only is it aged, but it was produced using the “pulped natural” process, where the cherry is stripped off, but the mucilage is left on the bean. During the sun drying process the mucilage ferments, endowing the bean with a unique set of flavors that typical production methods do not allow for. I’ve had one other coffee produced this way, the Panama Hartmann Honey from Gimme Coffee, and I remember being struck by how apt the inclusion of the word “honey” in the name was. The coffee was rich, succulent, smooth, and very enjoyable.

And so I was excited to try this aged coffee from Barrington, whose coffees I have been enjoying a great deal lately. It was produced in the Apaneca Mountains of El Salvador, at an elevation of 5100 feet. The coffees from Finca Cerro Las Ranas, owned by the Salaverria family, are certified by the Rainforest Alliance, and this batch is made up entirely of the Bourbon-Paca varietal.

Barrington initially received this shipment in 2007 and stored the coffee for two years in a controlled environment to allow it to mature. Once they felt it had reached its optimal development, they transferred it to hermetically bags to halt any further aging. The result?

The nose is rich with heavy flavors of walnuts and molasses underscored by a trace of subtle smoke. The palate has a luscious, sweet, creamy body, and very subdued acidity. Flavors of caramel, vanilla, toast, cherry skins, and a slight woodiness, rest atop this velvet foundation. The acidity really comes into play in the finish, with the flavor of tart citrus rind quickly giving way to sweet peaches, brown sugar, and milk chocolate.

All in all, an interesting coffee. Rich, but in a subdued way. The nose was not very forthcoming, but the palate and finish brought an interesting collection of flavors that really complemented one another quite well. I can see this being a great deeps-of-winter coffee, when you want a cup that just feels like wrapping yourself up in a blanket to warm up.

Intelligentsia Los Inmortales, El Salvador

Nathan — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:37:08 +0000

I was really looking forward to getting a chance to try this coffee. With the Gimme! coffee we had running low, I went ahead and ordered a couple pounds of coffee from Intelligentsia, the Los Inmortales El Salvador and the Itzamna Guatemala. I tell you, I think it’s pretty awesome that they (and Terroir does this also) roast the coffee on the same day that they ship it to you. So basically, right now I’m drinking coffee that was roasted only 5 days ago, which I’m pretty happy with.

Here’s the details on this coffee (from the Intelligentsia website):

Location: Santa Ana, La Libertad
Varietal: Bourbon
Altitude: 1450-1700m
Harvest: January-March

Intelligentsia says that this coffee is their attempt to “create the most delicious and convincing coffee that we can to represent El Salvador.” To do this, they blend together beans from four different farms:

Finca Malacara – Guillermo Alvarez, located in Santa Ana
Finca El Cerro – Eduardo Alvarez, located in Santa Ana
Finca Bosque Lya – Jose Molina and family, located in Santa Ana
Finca Matalapa – Vicky Dalton-Diaz, located in La Libertad

All of these are part of Intelligentsia’s collection of Direct Trade coffees.

The first thing I noticed is that this is is a super smooth coffee. The second thing that stood out were the aromas when I was making this – very strong notes of grain, toast, and spices such as cinnamon. I find the coffee to be very nutty with a bit of caramel floating around in it and a very slight hint of fruit, subtle melon maybe. It is not overly acidic, instead the acidity is quite restrained. When the coffee hits your taste buds the acidity comes in to brighten things up, turn on the lights so to speak, but then steps back to let the flavors take the spotlight. I do think this is a pretty harmonious cup of coffee, very easy to drink.

Note: What I’m struck by here is a really interesting comparison to wine, specifically to the ideas embodied in different bottlings put out by a top producer. Take Saintsbury for instance, the Russian River Valley pinot noir producer. They have their Garnet bottling, Carneros Pinot Noir, and then they get into a series of single-vineyard bottlings, such as the Brown Ranch or Lee Vineyard pinot noirs. Each of these is an ascending step up the ladder of site-specificity. The Carneros Garnet allows them a lot of latitude in composing the wine, specifically in terms of the percentage of pinot noir grapes that they use. But the large majority of the grapes need to come from Carneros. Then you get into the Carneros Pinot Noir, and this entails a greater amount of pinot noir grapes (greater than 75%), and they use this opportunity, or constraint, to produce a differently styled wine, one that they feel speaks more of the grape that it takes its name from (pinot noir). And lastly you get the single-vineyard bottlings, where each wine uniquely represents the very specific location that the grapes come from. Depending on the size of the vineyard, it could be argued that the specificity of the site varies and is perhaps more unique. The blending possibilities will be greater if a winemaker can blend grapes from a 3 acre vineyard parcel as opposed to a 1 acre parcel.

In the end, Saintsbury is using a series of bottlings to increasingly focus on the site-specificity of the pinot noir grape. It doesn’t necessarily mean that one of their single-vineyard bottlings is a better wine than their Garnet bottling, but it is more unique. You know specifically where those grapes came from and who grew them.

I see roasters such as Intelligentsia adopting this same approach. They have their house blends, and then they have blends such as this Los Inmortales that are blends from a small selection of farms in a single country, where the roaster “takes the most compelling and attractive characteristics from multiple growing regions and combines them to create a complete, harmonious, and thoroughly delicious culinary masterpiece.” And then they also offer farms that represent a single, unique farm, such as the Hacienda La Esmerelda offering.

Clearly, coffee roasters are emulating a lot of ideas, whether consciously or not, from the world of wine. And it is logical in that it highlights how similar these two products are to one another.

Drinks With Nathan » El Salvador

Barrington Coffee Roasting Co. Aged El Salvador Finca Cerro Las Ranas 2006

Intelligentsia Los Inmortales, El Salvador