Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Cupping FVH lots

When I was in Guatemala to visit Finca Vista Hermosa about a month and a half ago Edwin gave me samples of the different lots they have. He took it from the bags that were getting their reposo (resting period) - before it goes to the dry mill. So the beans were still in their parchment and needed to be hulled / dry milled and then sorted.

So, with a borrowed huller (Thanks Mads!) we dry milled all the samples in our office at the roastery back in Denmark.



Last week we sample roasted the lots and cupped it. It's really interesting to be cupping lots from a single farm. The picking and processing of these coffes are all the same. It's simply down to differet micro-climates from field to field. If understood Edwin correctly the mixture of varieties are pretty much the same on all lots and soil isn't much different within the farm.

The lots were all quite similar. For me it was hard to tell the difference when they were hot, but as they cooled down a bit the nuances came out and the characteristics of each lot became apparent. I wouldn't say the differences were huge. And they were all really good; clean, sweet, balanced, good acidity and full body. But we thought the El Mirador and the actual Finca Vista Hermosa lot were the best. So we did another round with those (blind) and the FVH lot came out on top. This is also the lot we got last year and now we're looking forward to the new crop.

1 comment:

J.Dupont said...

Splendid, looking fwd to taste it!!! We also had a great guatemala cupping last week...we´ll compare some day...You got the upperhand, but we´ll be representing gua much stronger this year than last year!

See You @ the cupping table.

 
'