Category: Green Beans > Central America

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Guatemala Antigua Peaberry "Especial"

Sweet Maria's Coffee

Another coffee we secured by special arangement, and a Guatemala Antigua that really cups like one! As some who follow the offering carefully will know, it is not often we offer an Antigua coffee, surprising to some since you might call it the "Grandpa" of specialty coffee. To my mind, Antigua was the first region-specific coffee offered on the burgeoning Specialty Coffee market back in the '70s. It was certianly the first one consumers started asking for by name. The valley around the town of Antigua, the original capital city of Guatemala and less than an hour from the new capital Guatemala City, was ideal for coffee. It was widely planted as far back as the 1880s by mostly German immigrants, and had borad, fertile, well-draining volcanic soils since it was the watershed for the facmouas Agua and Fuego volcanoes. But as Antigua gained a reputation, and the price was driven up, the quality dropped, and much coffee sold as Antigua was not truly from this limited area (sometimes Acatenango, sometimes Fraijanes, sometimes from Honduras!) Because Antigua is an "old school" specialty coffee, it is an arechtype of flavor, in a sense. This is what we call "classic" cup profile: clean, aromatic, good bittersweet coffee flavor. That doesn't make it the most "exciting" cup in the world, by todays standards. But it is the epitome of the classic specialty coffee cup profile, and this special Peaberry lot truly has that correct Antigua character that is increasingly rare. The dry fragrance has cocoa vanilla, hazelnut; add water and the wet aromatics sweeten up a bit, with noticeable spiciness (clove-allspice). Cup flavors are clean, balanced and (it sounds ridiculous to say) very "coffee-like," meaning archetypal coffee bittersweets. The cup flavors feature soft chocolate tones and avery impressive buttery body (moreso that any Antigua I have cupped in recent years). There's traces of tobacco in the finish, with a bit of mint. So why is this lot "Especial"? Because we basically had a very good cupper (who I cannot nam, sorry!) pick and choose through all of the peaberry lots coming into the respected Pastores mill in Antigua to create this coffee. Peaberry is a small percentage of the harvest, and each farm might not have enough to offer as a distinct exportable lot. So essentially our hired gun "cherry-picked" the best of the best to create a lot just for us.

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For more information on this product, visit Sweet Maria's Coffee's website.