Untitled - Four Barrel Coffee

A friend from yoga class (don’t judge us) dropped by our house last week with some gluten-free bread,
a bottle of Lambrusco, and some really fancy cheese (don’t judge us).
As she unwrapped the chevre, she told us how she thought that some of the cheese was infused with stout
beer, but the cheese monger explained that it just had flavors that reminded him of stout. Then she thought
another cheese tasted like dark chocolate, but the cheese monger explained that she was supposed to pair
that cheese with a bite of dark chocolate. The whole thing left her a little confused. And this is a cosmopolitan, Vassar-educated architect we’re talking about (don’t judge).
After hearing her story, we started re-reading our own tasting notes. They all made perfect sense to us, but
we had to accept that they might leave some folks a little confused. Like we are whenever everyone else in
the room starts talking about True Detective. What’s up with that show? (Please withhold judgment.)
These new tasting notes, or flavor descriptors, or whatever you want to call them... they’re based on the
same information that they always have been. Tal and Sarah Jane sample roast little 100 gram (one sandwich
bag) batches in our century-old four barrel sample roaster. They lay all the coffees on a cupping table, and
share their thoughts.
We used to try to keep these thoughts unvarnished and professional, like a Nordic-designed oak table (stop
judging us). From here on out, we’re letting the roasters and other tasters express themselves. Like in that
song Madonna released in 1988. Don’t judge us.
Written by: Nicholas Koch
The farmer, Sebastian Solis, ambled into the goat pen. Taking a moment to adjust his
straw hat against the bright El Salvadoran sun, he half-knelt next to the enormous brown
and white speckled goat, tucked the goat’s right-hind leg into the crook of his tall knee,
and braced his left shoulder against the animal’s body. The goat’s rosy udder was engorged with milk, like an over-full balloon. Looking at it made me feel uncomfortable.
Solis reached down, took hold of one of the goat’s bloated teats, and firmly pulled down
toward the plastic cup he held underneath. The milk rushed out in a forceful, frothing,
yellowish torrent. Not exactly what danced through my brain when the farmer asked if I’d
wanted a drink, but I forced myself not to waver. Solis offered me the cup, brimming as it
was with thick warm goat-tit foam, his smile beaming toward us like light from a beacon.
I accepted and beamed right back.
Despite my reservations, the milk tasted delicious. The farmer’s wife, bless her, had
taken it upon herself to scoop heaps of instant coffee crystals into the bottom of each
cup, giving us the distinct sense of drinking a freshly steamed latte. The farmer repeated
the process three more times and doled out steaming cups of body-temperature-warm
goat’s milk to my traveling companions. He first handed one to Tal Mor, one of Four
Barrel’s co-owners and, at the moment, the de facto leader of our traveling troupe.
He passed another cup to Bobby Sanchez, one of Four Barrel’s most heavily tattooed,
afro-coiffed, and longest-running employees. Bobby thankfully spoke fluent Spanish and would act as my
interpreter throughout the trip while I linguistically fumbled my way through the country. The final cup went to
Alejandro Valiente, the mustachioed, taller-than-average cofounder of Virmax Mesoamerica, whom we were
presently employing as our sort of consultant-escort-chauffeur-hotelier. Before Bob’s and my arrival, Tal had
warned Alejandro about us. “Ellos son Locos,” he’d said.
After a few minutes, Tal turned toward me and noticed my glass was still nearly full. Leaning in, he motioned
toward the farmer and quietly recommended, “You should finish it.” The farmer had been looking at me. I
nodded, made eye contact with the farmer––his eyes pinched at the corners from years of sunshine and
smiling––and gulped down the chalky, sweet remains of the cup, the sunshine hot against my back.
It was the second week of February. Bob and I had arrived in El Salvador early the morning before, after
a long if uneventful redeye from San Francisco. Neither of us saw this trip coming. The owners surprised
us with the news, presumably as a goodwill gesture for our long and (if I may say so) generally upstanding
employment, but we didn’t know for sure. We felt honored but superfluous. Like the third and fifth wheels of
a double date.
We spent the first couple days acclimating ourselves to our new setting, choking down yellow goat’s milk and
wending our way through rows of manicured pacarama plants, occasionally reaching up to eat ripe coffee
cherries fresh off the branch. On the third day, we woke from our chilly mountain top abode and took the
winding road to Finca la Montañita. The mountain roads in El Salvador are not pleasant. They’re heavily bestrewn with rocks, prone to steep grades, rarely paved, and often lined with emaciated stray dogs who don’t
appear to realize that roads are for vehicles. The truck’s cab would bounce and jostle over each craggy turn,
turning even the shortest trip into a broken carnival ride.
Montañita is a small farm, located in the La Palma municipality of Chalatenango, roughly two hours east of
Metapán. The farm’s proprietor, Rene Lemus, is one of Four Barrel’s longest-standing partners. He first sold
his coffees to us back in the 2009, the year after we opened our doors for business and the year before the
SF Giants won the World Series. We’ve carried his coffees every year since, but I hadn’t so much as seen
the man.
“To gain someone’s trust,” Tal told us as we made our way toward Montañita, The Roots’ Phrenology thumping through the car’s speakers, “you can’t just email or call them. You have to visit them. To truly win their
trust, you have to visit them three or four times. Let them know you’ll come back.” In the case of Rene Lemus
of Finca Montañita, this approach paid off. Shortly before we arrived in El Salvador, Renee was accosted by
a wily competitor of ours who offered him slightly more money for the same coffee. He convinced Rene to
the coffee to this year’s Cup of Excellence, a prestigious competition that identifies and awards some of
the world’s finest coffees, often ending with the winning coffees pulling astronomical prices at final auction.
Rene’s coffees had fared well in previous years, ranking as high as second place. He told us that, this year, as
a sign of good faith, he would sell the coffee to us instead. Just then, a sugar cane truck roared into earshot
along the highway behind us, and I almost mistook its approaching chain-rattle for the excitement rumbling
in Tal’s stomach.
In all, we would visit 15 different farms and cooperatives over the six-day visit. We drove to the Capucas
cooperative in Honduras and navigated the cacophonous maze of a state-of-the-art coffee processing mill
operating at full tilt. We farm-hopped between the Diaz family’s estates and attempted handstands on the
eldest son’s rooftop patio at sunset while roughly 1800 meters above sea level. We danced to Salvadoran pop
music blaring from car speakers in front of a gas station while eating ice cream cones in the thick evening
heat. One night, we cupped over 80 different coffees in an after-hours, knuckles-down marathon cupping,
the whole time listening to Lady Gaga’s anthemic “Alejandro” on repeat, much to the chagrin of our own
Alejandro. We continued to accidentally flush fistfuls of toilet paper down the plumbing of every toilet we
encountered even after repeated warnings not to because we kept forgetting that not every country does
that. We were treated to an unusual exhibit of roots and branches that vaguely resembled everyday objects
and animals, collected through the years (and proudly displayed) by a kind but eccentric Guatemalan coffee
producer. There remained one last task before we headed home.
On our final night in El Salvador, we held a farewell tournament to determine the official Foosball Master of
Buenos Aires. We’d been playing sporadically on Alejandro’s personal foosball table throughout the week,
usually in the evening, just after dinner. The results had been mixed. After dominating those first few days,
I watched helplessly as the others racked up game after game. I held the lead in victories only by a small
margin.
The first to be eliminated, cruelly, was Alejandro. He threw his hands up in the air and cursed us in Spanish,
his height adding a sense of comedy to his upthrown arms. Bob was eliminated next, his match lost by a margin of only one or two goals. He cried trickery. Shots of tequila and rum were passed generously between us,
the still-full bottles imparting a sense of responsibility to each of us to polish them off. Tal and I then squared
up against one another for the final round. I couldn’t help but succumb to the usual pointed emotions that
accompany the ends of journeys: the anticipation of arriving back home, the impending relief of sleeping in
my own bed, and the deep sadness of an adventure drawing to a close.
sell to him instead, presumably while he was sneering, or laughing maniacally, or stroking an equally villainous cat. Just like that, hundreds of pounds of coffee we had planned to purchase was siphoned away. This
practice isn’t unheard-of in the coffee buying world, although it doesn’t exactly make you friends. We didn’t
fault Rene for accepting the higher paycheck. The buyer, on the other hand… “That buyer knew what he
was doing,” Tal said to us. “If we ever accidentally bought someone else’s coffee, you can be sure we’d do
everything we could to get it back to them.”
We arrived at Rene’s home in late morning and sat across from him on the crudely hewn stumps of wood
that lined his modest outdoor patio. His hair was almost completely gray despite his youthful face––all the
producers appeared so much younger than their actual years. His olive polo shirt hung loosely around his
slight frame, like a son in his father’s clothing. He had asked us to come over to talk about the questionable
coffee deal, worried that we might be upset, hoping to smooth things over with us. A dog sat at attention
by Rene’s side, silently judging Bob and me in that knowing, soul-seeing way that animals sometimes have.
Tal reassured Rene in Spanish. “If you are ever offered more money for your coffee, just let us know. We’re
more interested in keeping our partnership than we are in saving a few dollars,” Tal said, offering his hand
for Renee to shake. Rene nodded in agreement, grasped Tal’s hand, and smiled. After a few moments, as if
something had just occurred to him, Rene bent in toward Tal, his voice changing from conciliatory to hopeful.
Speaking rapidly in Spanish, he told us that he’d held on to the best of his harvest. He’d planned to submit
If the humble purpose of the trip had been to dimensionalize, for Bob’s and my benefit, these first and most
important stages of the coffee production chain, then it soundly succeeded. The magnitude of the whole
experience––the heat of the place, the hills we climbed, the miles we drove, all the smiling people we met––
loomed large in my mind, many-headed, colossal. I wondered how many coffee drinkers back home would
ever have the privilege of seeing what we saw.
“This is it, Papi,” Tal said, holding up the battered foosball at eye level, smiling. “Por el rey de la montaña!”
he yelled, slipping the foosball into play.
Goma Woreda
1,975 meters
Heirloom
There’s a new road to Biftu Gudina. They’d worked on it for a while, and every time we visited, we got to see it
extend further along. One of the folks travelling that new road is a Harvest Assistant, whose on-site work has
brought new cooperation among Biftu Gudina and Four Barrel.
The Harvest Assistant position is pretty cool. We financed and created the position along with our friends at
Technoserve, so it’s actually a three-way collaboration. The Harvest Assistant works with the co-op every day of
the harvest, seven days a week, to ensure and improve quality. It sounds simple, but it isn’t.
For instance, the Harvest Assistant carries a long checklist of things that they photographed and inspected every
day: The water quality. The quality of the picking. The quality of the sorting. The shade on the drying beds. The
Harvest Assistant shares this all this information with both the co-op members and us back in San Francisco as
the harvest continues. As a result, we are absolutely certain that this coffee has been treated beautifully every
step of the way.
The folks at Biftu Gudina are taking full advantage of this extra assistance. Last year they expanded their capacity
about 40%, and that extra space was almost immediately filled with more coffee to process. On top of that
growth, Biftu plans to build a second mill right at their current processing station. Soon even more growers will
be making use of that road.
West Arsi
1,700-2,100 meters
Heirloom
Bulga is a wonderful coffee made by wonderful people in a wonderful place. In the past, we’ve ridden in the backs
of pickup trucks over miles of plank roads to visit these folks. This year the Bulga co-op came to us.
Intense rains threatened to keep us apart. All of our long-term relationships in town and all of our travel savvy
amounted to nothing: deep mud rendered the road from Worka to Bulga town impassible. It was terribly frustrating
to have made it all the way from San Francisco to West Arsi, but unable to cover the last few miles.
When the co-op chairman discovered our situation, he arranged a ride for himself. He left home before sunrise,
somehow made it through the swampy roads, and met us before sunset. That’s typical of Bulga’s members. They
won’t be deterred in either work or friendship.
They set a good example for us. We mimicked their determination by making a second trip, one that wasn’t rained
out. Once again their hosting went beyond the norm. They had planned a meeting with many of the farmers, so
we got to ask and answer questions beyond the coop leadership.
We learned that they overcame the heavy rain to produce a great harvest; we learned that Bulga is opening a
second remote mill, hoping to serve growers even deeper into the mountains. Because if people can’t come to
Bulga, Bulga will go to the people.
Tasting notes: A crazy kid’s idea of a valentine: a hand-picked bouquet of roses, lilacs, and fresh grass. A
Tasting notes: In real life, you don’t get to mix the rich body of a turnip mash with the flavor of a lemon chiffon
romantic dinner of strawberry and cherry pop tarts. And peach soda in champagne flutes.
cake and whipped cream. But this isn’t real life; it’s Ethiopia Bulga.
Chalatenango
1,800 - 2,000 meters
Pacas
There’s a stupid joke among coffee buyers--well, it’s not really a joke, it’s more like a fact--that everyone wants to
go to the mountain beyond the next mountain. Because we all imagine that just one more mountain over, that’s
where the really, really incredible coffee is hidden.
Have you ever gone shopping with the annoying friend who asks the shopkeeper or the farmer’s market guy,
“Don’t you have anything else in the back I might want to see?” Then you get the general idea. That’s what we’re
like. Sad but true.
It’s taken us four years to pinpoint that “mountain beyond the next mountain” in El Sal. We started in San Salvador,
and worked our way north to the Honduras border region called Chalatenango (“Chalate”).
How to describe it? it’s dotted with tiny family farms, all growing coffee amid the pine trees. One of our favorite
Bourbon types, Pacas is growing every couple of kilometers. And at the highest coffee growing elevations of the
country, the air is crisp and wonderful.
La Palma, Chalatenango
1,350-1,550 meters
Pacas & Bourbon
Hey, we just realized that we’ve never told you about why we name our coffees the way we do! Can you believe it?
Our bags all list three things: nation of origin, variety, and lot name. In this case, the country is El Salvador. You
still with us? Awesome.
The variety listing for this coffee is Pacas and Bourbon (“bore-BONE”). There may be a touch or two of other
beans in here, but it’s mostly Pacas and Bourbon... enough that we’re comfortable stamping that on the front of
these beautiful brown bags. We include the variety because we think that different varieties taste different. Like
pinot noir grapes, or meyer lemons, or Mexican Coke.
We don’t expect you to have every variety memorized. But if you drink a coffee you like, there’s a chance you’ll like
other coffees with those same beans. It’s not rocket science, but it is botany. Which is also a science.
Finally, there’s the lot name. If it’s a 900-person co-op in Ethiopia, we won’t name each farm. But we’ll get as close
as we can. In this case, that’s Rene Lemus’ la Montañita farm, winner of multiple awards and well-respected for
ecological practices.
Maybe next year we’ll be back around Chalate, pestering the locals for directions to the mountain beyond this
mountain. But really, sometimes even a coffee buyer has to be satisfied. Because it doesn’t get a lot better than
this.
All so you can say, “Good morning, baby. Can I make you a cup of Pacas and Bourbon coffee from the la
Montañita farm in the mountains of El Sal?”
Tasting notes: This cup is a wild yet civilized experience, like realizing the dessert at the fancy restaurant includes
Tasting notes: Super juicy low notes--that sexy professional cellist who likes to get tipsy on hard apple cider, then
ingredients we don’t recognize and flavors we didn’t expect: sage, panna cotta, Bosc pear, and loquat.
wink those nutmeg and brown sugar eyes. Montañita is totally out of our league.
OROSI | NICARAGUA
Metapan & Chalatenango
1,500 - 1,900 meters
Bourbon, Pacas, Typica
Terroir can be a trickster. You think you’re tasting a sense of place--its weather and soil--but you might also be
tasting the variety, the local production techniques, or even the way the coffee was packed for export.
With this lot, we’re exploring the terroir of the Alotepeque region. Alotepeque is a mountain chain (cordillera)
stretching along the El Salvador side of the Trifinio, where El Salvador meets Honduras and Guatemala. We’ve
offered many, many coffees from this region over the last four years, but this is the first time we’ve combined the
Antigua
1,500 - 1,800 meters
Caturra & Bourbon
We have a dumb inside joke here at Four Barrel. Okay, we have lots and lots of dumb inside jokes. The joke we
want to share is the one about small farmers.
People who work small farms aren’t actually any smaller than anyone else. So whenever we hear someone talk
about “small farmers,” we pinch our fingers together like we’re holding a little Lego man, and say, “teeny, tiny
farmers.” Ha. We’re hilarious.
efforts of several Alotepeque farmers into a super-lot.
These producers live and sleep on their farms--farms that they’ve kept going through years when the market and
the weather punished them--for generations.
We tend to telescope in pretty tightly in our coffee lots, sometimes separating lots from within a single farm. That’s
Luis Pedro Zelaya Zamora (LPZZ) respects that. He runs the Bella Vista coffee mill, which we respect for its
perfectionism and ethics. He’s a pretty large farmer himself (huge, like Hagrid the half-giant), but he’s always on
the lookout for family farms. When he finds one that he thinks we might like, LPZZ forwards along the contact info
and a couple samples to us.
who we are. But we wanted to experiment a little with accentuating terroir this year. That’s why we selected just
a dozen lots from up and down (mostly up) the Alotepeque mountain range, and brought them together in this
Sabor Reserve selection.
terroir.
One such coffee that has blew us away last year was from the dozen members of the Yuc family. The Yuc
(pronounced “yook”) family’s farms share an exquisite florality, accentuated by LPZZ’s impeccably clean milling.
This year, we incessantly asked LPZZ to put these on the table again. He finally relented, and we’re pleased to
present this year’s exceptional lot from the Yuc family. It’s going to be huge.
Tasting notes: This coffee turned down a job modeling for Jaguar commercials to hang at the farmer’s market.
Tasting notes: Are you rich? Because you taste like Guatemala los Yuc! Hahahahaha. Are you Julia Roberts?
Home-made butterscotch, rustic pecan pie, and honey dew melon carved with a century-old Basque hatchet.
Because you must be a Georgia peach, which also tastes like this coffee! Are you Evan Dando, who dated
Classy as hell.
Courtney Love back when he was in the ‘90s band The Lemonheads? Because that also is a flavor in this coffee!
We’re still going to offer plenty of focused Salvadoran coffees this year--several from within this same chain of
mountains. We just wanted to offer you the chance to taste what we think is the cream of the crop, tip-top of the
Antigua
1,550 meters
Yellow Bourbon
Grand-Uncle got a little tipsy last night (surprise), and started talking about riding bikes out to the blackberry
bushes, then bringing back sacks of berries for his mom to cook into rote Grütze (it’s sort of a German compote,
good with ice cream, yogurt, or pancakes). That got us thinking about things that will always be good, no matter
what.
Fernando Cofiño’s family has owned this place since 1932. And it’s still pretty old-fashioned, or as we say these
days, traditional and artisanal. He still grows weird, mutated low-yielding varieties like Yellow Bourbon. Who does
that? Who even does that anymore? Yellow Bourbon might be the sweetest coffee in the world. No joke. It’s like
the rote Grütze of coffees.
Which leads us back to Grand-Uncle’s point. No matter what, there’s always going to be someone around
who appreciates sweetness--who appreciates Yellow Bourbon. And there will always be someone around who
appreciates the care that folks like Fernando Cofiño take with their land and the families that rely upon it.
Cofiño has reforested over a hundred nearby acres with traditional pine and cypress trees. He’s ensured that the
families who work on the farm receive education and the chance to grow a few crops of their own. It’s nothing
special. Just doing what he’s always done. (Except it is kind of special. You should taste it.)
Bruselas, Huila
1,600-1,900 meters
Caturra
Our buying system is based on rewarding excellence. We know that sounds pretty corporate: “Four Barrel Coffee,
rewarding excellence since 2008,” but that really is the way it works.
Here in Andino, for instance, coffee has to pass through three tests before we include it in the lot we call “Especial.”
Passing the first two hurdles--an okay on the ground in Colombia and a tasting in our SF sample lab on Valencia
Street--gets a coffee included in the Andino lot.
The third hurdle wasn’t something we planned; it just happened. In the course of tasting these samples--from
tiny, 200-pound lots--we’d very rarely notice something so mind-blowing that we couldn’t bring ourselves to let it
disappear into Andino’s broader beauty. So we instituted a third hurdle, and named it Andino Especial.
Andino Especial is a rotation of six superstar contributors. Their names: Suldery Arango, Albeiro Calambas, Olga
Muñoz, Benjamin Argote, Bianca Ortega, Otoniel Castro. The rotation of these sub-lots means Especial will subtly
change from week to week.
International market forces, along with environmental difficulties, have recently made some of the world’s best
coffee producers question the viability of coffee farming. That’s a sad reality that we’re dedicated to countering by
rewarding excellence. And also drinking it. Especially drinking it.
Tasting notes: Retana wakes up in India with a mango lassi, hops a private jet to Oregon’s orchards for a pink lady
Tasting notes: Get out the checked tablecloths, because this ridiculous 1950s picnic of a coffee features pink
apple, then finishes the night in Paris, with a classic brown butter roast chicken and Champagne.
lemonade and watermelon. White jasmine flowers and fresh mint hand-cut for iced tea catch the breeze.
BIFTU GUDINA | ETHIOPIA
Dipilto
1,350-1,375 meters
Maracaturra
Last year was a big risk for everyone. Guess it was a good year for gamblers.
Last year we offered Nicaraguan coffees for the first time. We did so even though Ocotal is insanely hot and dry,
and even though Ocotal producers traditionally dried their coffee cherry on unshaded black tarps. We took that
risk because a little bird told us that the La Estrella mill had built super-cool raised and fully-shaded beds. Still,
it was a risk.
The Lovo family took a risk, too. When the Lovo family--well-respected in the world of Nicaragua Dipilto coffee-decided to go all-in and dry all their coffee on these new beds, they turned a lot of heads. It wasn’t the first time
they’d been ahead of the curve, but still, it was a risk.
San Fernando
1,400 - 1,600 meters
Catuai & Caturra
We all know someone who hasn’t quite gotten into Four Barrel. According to our statistics, out of 350 million US
and Canadian citizens, approximately almost all of you haven’t even heard of us. And out of the thousand of you
who have heard of us, about half think that we sell carburetors and shotguns. Which is a great business model,
sure. But it’s not what took us to Nicaragua.
We went to Nicaragua to get up there in the mountains, where folks like the Herreras grow incredible coffee. The
town of San Fernando sits there for more or less the same reason we came: to serve the people who have been
working this land for a century, and to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Here’s how the risk turned out: Those fancy new drying beds extended the drying time from just a few days in
the blazing sun to a more gentle couple of weeks. And that in turn improved the coffee’s sparkle when it arrived
at the Port of Oakland.
This lot in particular features the fruits of labor from the father-son team of Roger and Rony Herrera. When we first
met the elder Herrera, it was at a shared table in Ocotal’s best BBQ joint. The gentleman welcomed us by ordering
a bottle of something hard, a bucket of ice, and a set of clean glasses.
And that in turn allowed us to offer this coffee from the Lovos, who own the Bella Aurora farm (of this lot), along
with two other farms we’ll include in our Friendo Blendo. A family of gamblers.
So when you’re trying to explain this coffee in a plain black-and-brown bag to one of those 350 million people who
has never heard of us, follow his lead: start with a batch of Herrera and a set of clean glasses. And if they need
further explanation, brew a second batch, and ask them how they feel about carburetors.
The Bella Aurora Maracaturra, which always excels in Nicaragua’s Cup of Excellence, is hotly anticipated each
year. This year, we offered such a fantastic premium that Lovo just sold it to us, and skipped the competition
entirely. The cashier is here with your winnings, sir.
Tasting notes: More macho than the the Village People, and more posh than Victoria Beckham. Muscat grape,
Tasting notes: Sure, the Victorians colonialized half the world and still couldn’t feed their own orphans, but they
port wine, and a fig-rhubarb dessert in cinnamon crust dominate this ruggedly luxurious coffee. If Esquire
got dessert right. Straight out of Charles Dickens, this coffee feels like a hot and syrupy rum raisin cake, dotted
magazine had named their favorite coffee in 1974, this would’ve been it.
with berries and doused in liquor.
We remember being young people of a certain age, growing up in Twin Falls, Idaho; Portland, Oregon; Cupertino; even The Haight. We remember learning that British people called underpants “pants,” and thinking
that was pretty funny. And then we dated some people, and it wasn’t terribly funny anymore. But what’s still
quite charming is the British slang for lacy unmentionables: smalls.
And yes, we have smalls to share with you. Our smalls are quite clean, thank you. And also quite lovely.
They’re imported, after all, from a lot of the same farmers and mill-workers we deal with every week. We
don’t want to say that we like them any more than our usual single-origin offerings. After all, they come from
a lot of the same people. But they are a little more… private.
If you’re reading this, then apparently you’re special enough to know about our smalls. We can’t really offer
free samples of them, because frankly they’re expensive enough as they are. Furthermore, they’re quite petite; you won’t see these coffees showing up on grocery store shelves or in budget-conscious tech company
cafeterias. But you? You’re always welcome to come over to our place to try them on for size. After all, there’s
only one reason we got these smalls in the first place: we want you to like them.
Chalatenango
1,600 - 1,650 meters
Pacamara
Tasting notes: Let’s hang out in a summer meadow. We’ll stop and smell the flowers, then bust out apricots
and butter cookies. And let’s stay there until the late summer sunset turns the horizon into a giant burnt orange.
Antigua
1,550 meters
Maracaturra
Tasting notes: Imagine a banana split sundae. It’s all gooey goodness, with sweet chocolate and vanilla ice
cream balanced by a slice of banana, and a little pluot added for the hipster foodies. This coffee’s got everything
but the nuts.
CHAIRMAN OF THE BULGA CO-OP