Colombia Villa Maria Caldas Supremo

In December 2012, we began selling a great new coffee: Colombia Villa Maria Caldas Supremo. When it's clear that a coffee is so extraordinary that it's worth offering it to our customers, I begin to investigate the coffee plantation and learn everything possible about the coffee.  There are so many variables that are involved in the flavor of the coffee beyond the country origin or continent. It's impossible to accurately explain every variable, but here are a few reasons why it's important to know where your coffee comes from.

Don Balvino and his Maragogype Coffee Trees

1. The word Terroir is well-known among wine connoisseurs to describe the region, the soil, the altitude, and climate in which the wine is grown. This Colombian Coffee is grown in Villa Maria, Caldas, Colombia.  The farm, Estate La Meseta, is well known for its good farming practices.

2. When you see the word, Supremo, you might think, "Hey, this coffee must be SUPREME." It may be, but supremo really tells us the size of the beans. Our Colombia Medellin Excelso  is another example of bean size. Supremo is the largest of the beans except for a natural mutation called Maragogype, also called Elephant beans. Excelso is the next size of beans. Specialty coffee beans are separated according to their size because each size bean will have different flavor profiles. In order to retain consistency, it's important to have a bag of coffee with the same screen size. Often the larger beans have greater complexity, but it's important to not judge a bean by its size only. There are a plethora of variables that go into an awesome cup of coffee.

3. The Altitude:
This special coffee is grown over 3300 ft. above sea level. Coffee grown at higher levels are denser beans that often have greater complexity, acidity, and exhibits floral and fruity notes. Denser beans that are often characterized  as SHB (semi-hard beans) or SHG (strictly high grown), can be stored longer and retain their flavor characteristics longer.

4.  The coffee varietal:
Each coffee cultivar (varietal) has different flavor profiles. Some popular cultivars are bourbon (pronounced boo-rbon (with a french pronunciation of the "on"), caturra, and typica. Bourbon, sometimes called Yellow Bourbon, is planted all around the world- in Brazil, Rwanda, and Indonesia. The different cultivars, the different altitude, and different soil quality will all contribute to the quality of the cup. There are problems with monoculture- when the same cultivar is planted in the same field. Monoculture invites coffee pests that find one tree interesting and then destroy the entire crop. Below is the family tree of the Colombia Villa Maria Caldas!

The Colombia Villa Maria Caldas Supremo is one of my all-time favorite coffees. With notes of peanut butter, chocolate, and almonds the mouthfeel will remind you of peanut butter because it seems to stick to the roof of your mouth. It's best brewed in a French Press or drip.

New Tea at Chazzano Coffee Roasters

When you look at the new item that came in the mail from Zen Tea Traders, you may be confused about what Chazzano Coffee is selling these days?!?!

Are you finished guessing? It's a Pu-er cake aged since 2004 from the Yunnan Province, in the town of Xishuangbanna (pronounced sig-song-banna). Xishuangbanna means "twelve thousand rice fields." (You'll rock the crossword puzzle in the Shanghai version of the New York Times.) This tea is grown on one of the six famous tea mountains in Xishuangbanna. These mountains provide excellent growing conditions for Pu-er and the soil quality helps with the unique taste profiles. Like the movie, "There's Something about Mary," the same could be said about the soil for various tea, coffee, and wine growing regions, "There's something about the soil." The reason that some Ethiopian coffees have notes of blueberries is that the same chemical that makes blueberries taste like blueberries is found in the soil in that region and when the coffee is roasted a certain way, those chemicals can be part of the aromatic signature of the coffee. The age of the tea, the terroir (region), the altitude grown, and brewing duration dictate the flavor profile.

Tea is crazy complicated and complex- the brewing times, the amount of steeps, and the temperature depend on the type of tea. For Pu-er, we brew it at boiling, eight different brewing  times.

Here is the schedule of steepings:

1st- 20 secs
2nd-30 seconds
3rd-60 seconds
4th-1 min 20 seconds
5th 2-minutes
6th-3 minutes
7th-4 minutes
8th-6 minutes

The tea is removed from the wrapping and we use the Pu-er knife to extract a small amount from the cake.

We brew our coffee and tea in French Presses because it looks great and it is easy to get the full extraction of the coffee/ tea flavor.

Here is the first steeping of the Pu-er tea.

Here are my cupping notes for this awesome tea, aged since 2004.

1st steep: sweet, with a melon ball finish
2nd steep: bold in back of palate, tremendous richness
3rd steep: sweeter, more mouthfeel in front
4th steep: creamy, no bite- very minty
5th steep: sweeter than the 4th, mint note remains
6th steep: light, light colored cup, sweet honeydew notes linger
7th steep: even more honeydew notes, very light body
8th steep: It reminds me of the 4th steep- creamy with no bite, but a bit of roughness in the middle of your palate.

Here is a map of the region where this tea was grown...

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