The beginning of a new week is a perfect time to showcase a new-to-me roaster, Peixoto Coffee Roasters, who not only have a cafe and roastery, but also their own family coffee farm in Brazil! I’m starting off with Peixoto’s Panorama, a truly special nanolot because the trees this coffee came from were killed by a rare frost, so it’s truly a limited a edition coffee.
Purchase this coffee directly for $22/12oz
Phoenix New Times article on Peixoto
PEIXOTO COFFEE ROASTERS PANORAMA
Nestled in the suburbs southwest of Phoenix, AZ you’ll find Peixoto Coffee Roasters, owned by Julia Peixoto Peters (oh, by the way, the name is pronounced “Pay-show-tow”) and her husband (and head roaster), Jeff Peters, the cafe and roastery opened in January 2015, but the story goes much, much further back! The Peixoto family history is written in great detail on their website, so check those resources out and hear about it in their own words. The story starts with Nelson Alvares Peixoto, born in 1920, who established the farm where he raised his family, Boa Vista. One of Nelson’s sons, José Augusto Peixoto, planted his own coffee trees on his father’s plot and eventually bought land adjacent to his father’s Boa Vista. In the 2000’s, the farms were combined to become what the family now calls Fazenda Sao José da Boa Vista, located at 1280masl in the Minas Gerais region of Brazil. The Peixotos have done an amazing job on their website of documenting their family history and all the work that goes into their farm. Their pride in their operation is self-evident and I would shortly come to realize the benefits of that pride in this coffee, Panorama.
Panorama is the second experimental nanolot Peixoto has released in 2017. It’s a Red Catuai variety grown on the family farm and it was naturally processed (dried in-cherry like raisins) using what Peixoto calls the chama escura or “dark ember” method (that would be a pretty darn good name for a coffee, too!). This 4-bag (roughly 600 pounds) nanolot is truly rare because the 20,000 trees that produced this coffee were killed by a rare frost one night shortly after this lot was harvested, so it is a one-of-a-kind coffee in every sense of the word.
I prepared this coffee using my standard pourover method of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper. My Handground grinder was set to 3 and I used the incredible Third Wave Water product to make my cups.
What an interesting coffee! I’m greeted by a light-bodied cup with flavors that remind me of flowers and coriander up front. This cup has a light citrus acidity that is hard to nail down. It has some orange notes and a bit of grapefruit pithiness in the “feel” of it, but not so much the flavor, if that makes sense. There is an orange juice sweetness to the bottom end of this coffee, too, but for all these orange-y descriptors I wouldn’t say this coffee is an orange-bomb like I’ve gotten from other coffees. It’s really a unique coffee and kind of hard to describe. It’s very light-bodied but it doesn’t come off as watery at all to me. It’s subtle, but doesn’t taste washed-out or muted. It’s more… fleeting. I get glimpses of flavors that flash by quickly and then I find myself taking another sip right away to catch that flavor note again and again, only to wonder where all my coffee has gone! As the cup cools there is a hint of ferment and the finish and aftertaste, which are both short-lived, have a creamy, milk chocolate note for me.
There is definitely a coriander note in the first half of the sip, for me. I’ve recently been enjoying Boulevard Brewing’s Hibiscus Gose. This is a late-Spring beer that Boulevard has trouble keeping on the shelves here in Kansas City and I am really finding some similarities in the flavors of that beer and this coffee. Coriander and some floral notes, for sure! I don’t think I’ve ever really tasted coriander in a coffee before and now that my mind has made that connection, it’s all I can think of!
This is a really interesting coffee. It’s super light, yet it’s not watery or muted. The flavors are unique, but they work beautifully together. This is a subtle, but very delicious and easy-drinking coffee all the same. The fleeting nature of the flavors really encourage me to drink this cup fast and I’m happy I still have most of my bag left because this coffee is going to be gone much too quickly!