ROAST | LIGHT MEDIUM

ORIGIN | PALMIRA ARRIBA, BOQUETE, PANAMA

NOTES | JUICY PEAR, CITRUS, RED CHERRY, BROWN SUGAR

Edwin Ferrenbach is 75 years old, and he's been tending his farm in Palmira Arriba for over 35 years. He lovingly named the estate, Sombras del Barú, because it is nestled in the shade of Panama's largest volcano, Volcano Barú. From there, Edwin tends to over 50,000 coffee trees of several varieties, and he does all weeding and maintenance on the property with a machete, an extension of respect for the natural environment surrounding the volcano.

This lot, grown under the watchful eye of both Edwin and Barú, has been processed in collaboration with our friends at Creativa Coffee District (their name should start to sound familiar to some of you by now!). Known for their excellence in processing, CCD endeavors to "spark collaboration in the coffee industry and beyond," and we have been the giddy recipients of many of those collaborations since they began working in Panama in 2018. Each lot of ripe cherries arriving at their mill is assigned to one of four carefully constructed fermentation designs, each with varying levels of fermentation impact. If you've sampled anything from CCD before, you might be aware of their love for anaerobic fermentation and their subsequent ability to produce some big, boozy, wild flavor profiles in a given micro or nano lot. This coffee, however, is none of those things.

Processing: Edwin's coffee underwent a variation of a processing method known as Intrinsic Cherry, which is CCD's ode to the more classic coffee profile. This method features the lowest fermentation level coming out of CCD's wet mill, and this particular washed lot underwent a variation in which it encountered both aerobic and anaerobic fermentation (for 24 hours and 48 hours, respectively). The result is a flavor profile profile that is both sweet AND complex, a combination difficult to achieve at elevations as low as Edwin's farm, which sits at 1400 masl. If you'll forgive our pun, we like to think of the resultant cup as an elevated washed coffee, with flavors that are bright without being blinding, and sweet without being simply that.

In the cup: In place of their more common "boozy red fruit" notes, CCD has processed this lot so that it features more subtle fruit notes, like pear, and a citrus-like acidity that is pleasantly bright. Flavors of red cherry and brown sugar add depth and sweetness to the cup, leaving us with a coffee that beautifully embodies what people love most about both well-executed commercial coffee (its sweetness) and higher-elevation specialty coffee (its complexity). Cheers.

Producer | Edwin Ferrenbach

Farm | Sombras del Barú

Process | Intrinsic Washed

Variety | Catuai, Caturra, Gesha, Pacamara

Elevation | 1400 masl