Farm/Producer:
La Esmeralda/ De La Finca's Project Farm
Elevation:
1750 masl
Varietals:
Caturra and Typica
Process Method:
19 Hour Anaerobic Natural
Roast Level:
Light/Medium
Tasting Notes:
Ripe Berries (Blueberry/Cherry/Raspberry), Milk Chocolate, Full Body, Juicy and Balanced
Additional Information
This offering comes from one of our import partners experimental project farms named La Esmeralda. It's a rather newly established farm in the under-promoted region of La Sampedrana in Comayagua, Honduras. This region has everything needed to produce spectacular coffees including high altitudes, lands rich in volcanic soils along with a rich culture. La Esmeralda was established by De La Finca (DLF) to grow bigger lots of more rare coffee varietals like geisha, pink bourbon, and parainema along with being able to conduct more experimental coffee processing post harvest.
DLF put this coffee through a triple fermentation process which produced an incredibly balanced and well rounded coffee. The first step after harvesting this lot was to put the coffee cherries in airtight barrels for a 19 hour long period where they ferment though an anaerobic process (devoid of oxygen), after this the cherries are removed from the barrels and placed on raised drying beds where they are dried under direct sunlight until they reach 16% humidity. They are then stored for 20 days, after this they are again placed back upon raised drying beds in the shade to dry out more slowly until they reach a final humidity of 12%. Then the seeds are depulped and prepped for export.
Generally, we aren't usually the biggest fans of experimental process type coffees here. Many times these style coffees can be a little too intense and we find that they can sort of overwhelm the senses. So the fact that we booked a bit of this style coffee means we were extremely impressed. You can tell this coffee was meticulously processed by how well balanced it is, to date it is the best anaerobic process coffee we have brought in through our doors. We are getting a lot of ripe berry notes in the cup; Blueberry/Cherry/Raspberry. It also has notes of rich milk chocolate, with a juicy mouthfeel and nice clean finish. There hasn't been a brew method we haven't enjoyed yet for this one, and I can't think of any to steer away from. We highly recommend giving this a try as a real nice single origin espresso, its delicious!
