I really enjoyed Sunshower Farms’ rum and bourbon barrel conditioned coffees and I’m taking a peek at the third and last coffee in this series, their red wine barrel aged 100% Kona offering. Without further ado, let’s dive right in!
Purchase this coffee directly for $8.50/2oz, $33/8oz
More from this series: Golden Rum Barrel Aged | Bourbon Barrel Aged
SUNSHOWER FARMS RED WINE BARREL AGED 100% KONA
Sunshower Farms owners, Kate and Doug Hickey, are big beer fans and even run one of Hawaii’s only homebrewer’s shops, so it was just a matter of time before they experimented with a trend that has been popular in beer for a long time: barrel conditioning. Green coffee is like a sponge and it readily picks up flavors from its environment. When green coffee is stored in old alcohol barrels, then, the beans pick up a lot of flavors over a pretty short period of time. Kate and Doug have started conditioning some of their 100% Kona (100% grown right on their farm on the western slops of Hawaii, too) washed coffee in rum, bourbon and wine barrels. I’m usually pretty “meh” about barrel-conditioned coffees, but I have really enjoyed these ones. Maybe it’s the cold weather season or Kate’s deft hand on the roaster, but these coffees have really been working for me. They’re special occasion coffees, for me, intended for dessert accompaniment or maybe coffee cocktails and the like, but nonetheless, Sunshower have done a super job with the rum (my favorite, I think) and bourbon barrel coffees.
Today I’m taking a look at what Kate says is the most subtle of the three, conditioned in petit verdot red wine barrels. This coffee is roasted to Sunshower’s “Dusk” level, which Kate says is a “medium” and I’d say leans toward the darker half of medium. Kate uses washed Kona coffee from their farm for all of these coffee and says the wine barrel adds slight fruitiness to the cup. I used my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of Third Wave Water in a notNeutral Gino dripper with Kalita 185 filter and a Handground grinder set to 3.
In the aroma of the cup there is definitely some red/dark fruit notes, and I’m not sure if I would know this is barrel conditioned strictly from the aroma, whereas the bourbon and rum barrel coffees featured a lot of booze in the aroma. Kate’s right, this is easily the most subtle of the three coffees. The wine barrel conditioning brings some fruity notes that wouldn’t be out of place in a natural coffee to this washed selection, and it’s quite subtle. In the second half of the sip and into the aftertaste it becomes more apparent that the coffee was barrel conditioned, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the “booziness” level that the rum and bourbon coffees have. As the cup cools a couple of huffs of the aroma gave me a really rich, dark, gooey brownie note that was very unexpected and I think the wine barrel addition does add a certain fruit-forward chocolate character to this darker medium roast. Fantastic complement of flavors! This seems the most roasty of the three coffees, too, but that could just be because there is less of the barrel flavors in the finish, where I feel like they are most apparent, and the coffee stands on its own a little more in this wine barrel version. This is a sweet cup with red grape and maybe even some sweet cherry notes for me in the early sip. In the finish and aftertaste I get some hints of oak and a wine and chocolate richness that is really appealing.
Another winner! All three of these coffees in the barrel series are really good. For sure, this wine barrel conditioned one is the most subtle, by a longshot. The coffee’s roast and inherent flavors are really naturally complemented by the barrel and it works great. For me, the wine barrel brings as much of a chocolatey note out of the coffee as it does to add fruitiness and I loved that. This is one of the most chocolate-forward coffees I’ve ever had, for my palate. I still think the rum barrel version was my favorite because it had a lot of the fruitiness I would associate with a natural coffee and the booze level, while significant, read almost like the ferment I would expect from a funkier natural coffee. This wine barrel is coming in hot as a close second to the rum version, though, and they may be neck and neck. The bourbon barrel version was also very good and had a nice balance between coffee and bourbon, but of the three, the bourbon barrel notes stick out the most as not quite “belonging” in the flavor profile whereas I think I like the rum and wine versions so much because there is more complementing in the flavors and less contrasting. Nonetheless, I’m again, really impressed by these coffees and I think Kate and Doug have done a great job finding the right balance between tasting the adjuncts in these coffees and still having them work well with the coffee. Nicely done!