OK! We're really excited about this one!
The complexity of how it came to be is only second to the intensely flavorful and complex profile.
It started with an idea to continue our journey with barrel aging beyond Whiskey and Rum. One of our good friends is a vineyard manager over at House Family Vineyards in Saratoga, and they happened to have a beautiful French oak barrel that was home to many sweet Cabernet blends, and we were fortunate enough to inherit it about 7 months ago.
We placed a full 69 kilo bag of Gloria Rodriguez's Nejapa Santa Marta in there and rolled the barrel every day.
We thought about offering it as a single origin, but then... We got these two amazing lots from Sebastian Ramirez in Colombia. The wine yeast inoculated anaerobic lots were intensely fruited, and we aimed to balance and modulate the intensities of these winey coffees with each other in a way that you, too may find delightfully intriguing.
The concept was to emulate the flavor profile of a juicy red wine, yet not make the coffee taste like wine, so we had to put our minds together to pick apart each lot and reformulate it to give big fruit flavors like grape, strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, oak & wood, flowers, hibiscus, chocolate, coffee ice cream, cranberry, and a touch earthy with some savage candy flavors like blue raspberry, grape soda, zebra stripe gum, nerds rope, with a slight tannin aftertaste and linger that is both rewarding and intriguing.
We kinda nailed it, and we got it available just in time for February!
Coffee: Blend - El Placer Wine Barrel Aged Exp.
Region: Colombia, Quindio & El Salvador, Apaneca
Cultivar: Caturra (CO) & Bourbón (SV)
Process: 120 Hour Anaerobic & Barrel Aged Wet
Producer: Sebastian Ramirez & Gloria Rodriguez
Elevation: 1750 & 1500 Meters Above Sea Level
Roast Level: Medium-Light
Cupping Profile: Grape, Candy, Syrupy, Floral, Rose, Hibiscus, Earthy, Cedar, Cranberry, Blue Raspberry