September 2021 Magic Seeds
We are super excited to introduce you to this month's Magic Seeds, a honey processed Pacamara variety by Samuel Mena. We have plenty to say about that, but first let's take a look at our Daily Drinker. This month we have the wonderful opportunity to taste two great coffees from the same country, but also to see what makes one exceptional.
Your September Daily Drinker comes from the Santa Ana region of El Salvador. It is a regional selection of multiple farms, each with their own combination of coffee varieties and processing influence. You should see some similarities between your two coffees this month as there are general terroir identifiers that we typically see in coffee from El Salvador. That said, farmers from the areas where these coffee come from usually specialize in different processes and varieties.
El Salvador will always be a special country for me. It was the second country I visited as a coffee buyer, almost ten years ago. On that trip I noticed a sweet tobacco leaf and cedar note in almost every coffee I tasted. It's a very comforting flavor for me and it's exciting to share it with you as we enter into cooler mornings this time of year. Both these coffee start off with different expressions of the tobacco leaf, but diverge from there as they cool.
This group lot from Santa Ana immediately hits with a clean tobacco leaf note and some pecan pie nuttiness. There is a lot of warm caramelly sweetness in this cup. As it begins to cool we see notes of ripe apple and pear come forward with just a touch of baking spice. Fully cool, those pecan pie notes return and we are reminded of freshly baked spiced pear bread.
This month's Magic Seeds comes from a farm in the Chalatenango region of El Salvador. This is a fascinating coffee growing region with some very unique practices and deep history of excellence. There are producing practices that the norm here and virtually unheard of elsewhere.
Samuel Mena has a very small farm in San Ignacio named La Galdamez. Here he grows Pacamara and specializes in honey processing. This is the magical combination for this area. I have tasted many honey Pacamaras from this area and year after year they are an excellent, wild ride.
As with the Daily Drinker, in this cup you will see that tobacco note sneak in, but on the first sip you will see what makes this process/variety combination so special. We were immediately shocked by how juicy and clean this cup is and images of pineapple Gummy Bears were all we could see. Coming back for a second sip we saw some herbal and spice notes come forward and a honey aftertaste. As it continued to cool the cup took on some brighter notes that reminded us of elderflower and currants developing into cranberry.
We hope that you have loved this month's Magic Seeds and look forward to sharing another exceptional experience with you next month.
Photos provided by Café Imports.
