Tag: Panama
Barrington Coffee Panama Boquete “La Berlina” 2008
While I may gripe at times about Barrington Coffee and the lack of information they make available about their coffees, the fact is that the coffees they are offering (and that I’ve had the chance to try) are proving to be consistently very good. I have not yet had a coffee from them that I felt blasé about. The coffees have all been quite good, if not downright very good.
And this coffee in particular is one that runs counter to some of my points of disappointment with Barrington. Whereas most of their coffees are packaged as anonymous Mexican, Indian Mysore, or what have you, this is one of their Limited Edition coffees. All of the Limited Edition coffees are packaged with a small sticker indicating the origin information for the coffee in question. In this case, this coffee is from the Boquete region of Panama, and is labeled with the name of the farm that the beans come from, La Berlina, and the vintage the beans were harvested in, 2008. Their packaging still lacks the roast-date of the coffee which I find disappointing, but I guess you can’t get everything that you want.
Boquete is located in north-western Panama, approaching the border of Costa Rica. The general consensus is that the best coffees coming out of Panama now are all grown in this region, and this is where many of the high-profile Geisha varietal coffees – most notably the Hacienda La Esmerelda coffees – are grown. The La Berlina farm is owned by the Ruiz family and is situated at 4200 feet above sea level. It comprises about 55 acres, all of which are planted to the Typica varietal. The beans are wet-processed and then sun-dried.
This is a fairly light roast. Barrington’s website indicates that this it is their City roast. As I mentioned, there is no roast date on the package, and since I picked this up in a shop I have no idea how long ago it was roasted.
The nose is sweet with maple syrup and brown sugar, accompanied by a bit of cedar, clove, and allspice. The palate is flush with bright acidity. It is dry and oaky at first, with the sweetness beginning to come out as the coffee cools. Lots of citrus flavors, with oranges and lemons predominant, alongside some dusty, red pepper spices. The finish begins with very bright acidity and gradually transitions to citrus-tinged sweet caramel. This is a good, pleasant coffee to drink. It had lots of bright, citrusy acidity that really opened up and developed as the coffee cooled. My palate is really only just becoming attuned to lighter-roasted, more acidic coffees, and I enjoyed this one quite a bit.
I am increasingly finding that South American coffees tend to be brighter, more acidic coffees, while African coffees tend to be more full-bodied and sweet. This is, of course, greatly influenced by the roast and the way the coffee has been handled post-harvesting, but there is definitely a pattern that is beginning to take shape in the coffees that I’ve tasted, and in how roasters are treating the beans from these two different, broadly-defined regions. As I continue to ponder the relationship between terroir and coffee, I feel that I’m slowly building up enough of a base of coffees that I’ve tasted to be able to discern patterns such as these.
So here’s an interesting question. In the event that there are traditional methods for post-harvest processing (e.g. wet vs. dry processing being more common in some areas than others), can this be considered part of the region’s terroir? My initial inclination is to say no. That terroir should be what would come through from the bean, regardless of how it were processed. That terroir would be that trace element that remained consistent in the bean. But, something to ponder…