Las Mercedes Family

The trip started in El Salvador where my friend Jeff Taylor and I met Aida and Jose Antonio from Jasal.  We visited many farms and cupped much coffee; one farm was Finca Santa Rita.  This farm was covered with volcanic ash from the great eruption a few years ago that destroyed that crop, the ash looked like snow three feet deep and covering everything.  Today the minerals from that eruption have created a juicy and flavorful cherry that Aida processed naturally for us to create a truly outstanding coffee we will have this summer. 

At the same time we were cupping the Ethiopian Coffee, we were also cupping coffee from Brazil.  Over the course of three months we probaby cupped 40 different Brazils for both Espresso Blends, Single Origin Espresso, and as drip.  During our testing we found the Poco Fundo Fair Trade Organic coffee which we used in our Wests Best Spro .  This bean featured a slight fruitiness that we enjoyed as espresso and helped us earn the award for Best Espresso at the Western Regional Barista Championships in Berkeley, CA.  But we  don't settle on our laurels, so we continued experimenting and went back to our Brazil Yellow Bourbon - Fazenda Cachoeira for our US 08 Comp Blend .

For a quick review from the cupping room, I would like to highlight a few coffees from earlier this year before talking about what we are doing today.  The year started out with a couple new (but limited supply) Ethiopian Naturals.  Our initial goal with these Ethiopians was to find new coffee we might use in our competition espresso for the season.  We got samples from everywhere and the best was a great Natural Coffee from the Aricha locality in the Yiracheffe region of Ethiopian: Aricha 2 .