Yemen Mocha “Rimy”

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“Smooth and Delicious” Legend

Long ago and far away, coffee seedlings were taken by boat from their native Abysinian highlands (today’s Ethiopia), across the Red Sea and planted in the high arid mountains of the southern Arabian peninsula, in what is now Yemen.

For centuries, Arab and then Ottoman traders enjoyed a monopoly on this magically invigorating plant, and to protect it they enforced a strict ban on export of viable seeds of the mother plant. Not until 1690 were plants successfully smuggled to Ceylon and from there to Java, allowing the Dutch East Indies Company to join in competition for the worlds burgeoning coffee thirst. Today more than 85 countries grow it, and coffee is the world’s number one export commodity by dollar value. Still, some legends linger: the botanical name Coffea Arabica is owed to this passage through Yemen, which was formerly just a mountainous corner of a vast exotic land known to us simply as “Arabia”. Read more

Honduras H.G.

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MUCHO GUSTO

Mention Honduras and the mind conjures up a jumble of non-coffee associations: Tropical rain forests, Sandy beaches, Mayan ruins, Bananas, Panthers, Contras, Crocodiles, Cigars, and, as one tourist brochure poetically puts it, a land still dreaming under the spell of its own natural beauty.

Honduras is almost wholly mountainous, with narrow coastal plains. Two major mountain ranges running east to west divide the nation into halves. It is a republic bordering on Guatemala and El Salvador on the west and Nicaragua on the south and has both a Caribbean and a Pacific coast. The rugged terrain has limited the transportation network and kept the population of five million predominately rural and isolated. (Two out of the three railroads are owned by the banana companies, and all run along the north coast.) Read more

Puerto Rico “Yauco Selecto”

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Historians credit the Boston Tea Party in 1773 for creating a nation of coffee drinkers overnight, and coffee has been allied with democracy ever since. After the Sons of Liberty dumped King George’s tea into Boston’s harbor our founders looked instead to the West Indian colonies of Spain and France to supply them with coffee, the new patriotic elixir. Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Guadeloupe, and Puerto Rico happily filled the bill for 150 years, rewarding America’s switch to coffee with fine arabicas grown in near-ideal island conditions. Read more

Zimbabwe AA+ “La Lucie Estate”

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Last year we introduced a premium “flagship” coffee from Zimbabwe, trade-named “Pinnacle”, whose distinction was owed in part to being produced on only 8 select farms. One of those farms, La Lucie Estate, stands out for its near fanatical zeal in pursuit of the ideal coffee- production regimen. This year we are proud to offer the fruit of this single select estate. Read more

Tanzania Peaberry

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We begin our 1998 Coffee of the Month series with the perenial favorite, Tanzania Peaberry. There are two good reasons for this: First, it will provide a fine comparison with our delicious December COM, Congo Kivu. Produced at the same altitude and latitude and under similar climatic and cultural conditions, the two provide us with a practical test of any “peaberry effect”. Read more

Kenya AA “Karindundu Estate”

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Equatorial Kebab

On the map, the Equator skewers Kenya like a tasty bit of shish kebab. This maximal solar exposure is modulated by monsoons and Indian Ocean tradewinds. The Great Rift Valley, which runs from Syria to South Africa dominates Kenya’s inland relief, giving its coffee trees the cooling and slow growth benefits of high altitude, free of frost. Read more