My gracious friends at Onyx Coffee Lab sent me some complimentary samples of their La Palma micro-lot coffees from Colombia recently and this is the first one I’m reviewing. This one either hasn’t been released yet or it is a past release that isn’t available any longer, but either way it doesn’t appear on Onyx’s website at the time I’m posting this. This coffee comes from the farm of Alvaro Rodriguez and was processed using acetic fermentation. It consists of bourbon, castillo and Colombia varietals grown around 1650 meters above sea level. According to Onyx’s packaging, the coffee should have chocolate, juicy orange, cherry liquor and lime rind flavors.
La Palma y El Tucan is a coffee processing station situated in the eastern Colombian Andes near scores of small coffee farms. You can learn a lot about what La Palma does for coffee and farmers in this short video:
I prepared my sample cups using a notNeutral Gino pourover dripper (basically a Kalita 185 style dripper). It had refreshing acidity up front, definitely reflective of limes. I found the acidity in this coffee to be layered, soft and round. It was balanced by a milk chocolate sweetness. In some sips I caught notes of tart cherry along with the persistent lime notes. The acidity struck me as being fresh and vibrant rather than harsh.
Usually when the cup cools I get more acidity from coffee, but in this case the sweetness picked up. The milk chocolate remained and the cherry notes got sweeter, too. In another sample cup I got hints of citrus pith in the inherent bitterness of the coffee as well as some orangey sweetness and even a little coconut, especially in the aroma. There was a nice, lingering aftertaste that had lime, cherry and overall sugary flavors.
Being that this was my first sample of Onyx’s La Palma lots and I had three others to try, I was really happy with how things were starting out!
As it turned out, I also found out that these two coffees I reviewed in the past from Oddly Correct, and also enjoyed a lot, came from farmers using La Palma y El Tucan’s processing, too: Oddly Correct Carlos Ramirez and Oddly Correct Gerardino Tecano!