Good morning and welcome to today’s review. I’m starting the week off with a special coffee, a top-shelf gesha from the famed Hacienda La Esmeralda roasted by my good friends at Theodore’s Coffee Roasters. Drink up!
To purchase this coffee, please contact info@theodorescoffee.com, this special coffee is not listed on their website
Other reviews in this series: La Esmeralda Private Collection Gesha (Washed)
THEODORE’S COFFEE ROASTERS LA ESMERALDA GESHA ESPECIAL NORIA 43NB
Theodore’s Coffee Roasters in Owosso, Michigan are one of my favorite roasters. I’ve reviewed a lot of coffee from Theodore’s over the year and have always enjoyed their roasting, so much so that when someone contacts me for general recommendations for roasters, Theodore’s is one of the go-to roasters I always mention and tell people, “Pick anything they’re selling, it’ll be good.” Theodore’s have quietly been selling two amazing gesha coffees from the famed Hacienda La Esmeralda in Panama recently. I reviewed the phenomenal Private Selection (washed) coffee last week and I highly recommend it if you can afford it. This week I am taking a look at the natural processed Noria 43NB.
Hacienda La Esmeralda is probably the most famous coffee estate in the world. Coffee has grown on this land, owned by the Swedish Peterson family, since 1890 or earlier, but it wasn’t really until the late 1980’s that the Petersons started cultivating coffee at a more serious level on their farms in Boquete, Panama. At that time, Panamanian coffee was really pretty much commodity-grade and specialty coffee hadn’t swept the country yet. This changed in 2004 when Hacienda La Esmeralda won the Best of Panama competition with a coffee called gesha (sometimes spelled “geisha”) that also set the world record for the most expensive coffee lot ever sold at auction! After that, geshas became the rage for coffee competitions like the World Barista Championships and they continue to hold mythical status, as well as insane prices, particularly for the lots coming from the Peterson’s farms in Panama. Gesha is a varietal that grows pretty commonly in Ethiopia and, generally speaking, is nothing special there. It was named after the town it is thought to originate from nearby, Gesha. Gesha is quite leaf rust resistant and had been planted in Panama at some point, probably in the 1950’s or 1960’s. Prior to 2004, the Petersons were simply collecting all of their ripe coffee and combining it in lots, but that year they decided to separate their high altitude gesha out from the rest of their coffee. This coffee was growing on their highest elevation land, Jaramillo. It was this coffee that absolutely blew the minds of coffee buyers at the competition!
Today’s coffee is a natural process gesha grown at Jaramillo. Jaramillo is influenced by both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and is humid all year, and the land itself is home to many micro-climates. This coffee, Noria, is a microlot of gesha from a particular part of the Jaramillo farm and, the 43NB in the name is a designation of which part of the Noria lot this coffee comes from while “NB” means “natural bed.” My research leads me to believe that coffees named Noria (they also have Mario, Bosque and Reina microlots from Jaramillo) are always natural process coffees, although maybe they aren’t or they wouldn’t need that “NB” name…?… In any case, every Noria I could track down during my research was a natural. Naturals are picked and sorted, then the seeds (what we call coffee beans) are dried in the cherry like big raisins. Naturals tend to be sweeter, have bigger body and be fruitier than if they were removed from the skins and dried “naked” (washed process). I’m using my standard method of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper for this coffee. I use a Kalita 155 filter and pulse pour through a Melodrip to minimize agitation. Including a 30 second bloom, this coffee’s total brew time was 3:30.
Unlike the washed Private Selection gesha I reviewed last week, which was an aroma bomb and was a coffee I could just sit and smell forever, the aroma from this natural is a lot more subtle. There is a nice jasmine, hint of lime, and some brown sugar to be had here, but it’s not overflowing from the cup like the washed did. Taking a sip, I’m greeted by a medium-/light+ bodied coffee that has tropical notes standing out in the forefront, especially papaya. There’s a candy-like fruit note here, too, like an apple hard candy (imagine apple Jolly Rancher but flavored like a honeycrisp instead of the tart green apple it actually is). I’m picking up some peach notes that are pretty subtle but taste nice in this coffee (although I’ve never met peach notes in coffee that I didn’t like!). There’s a savory, ever-so-slightly tart component in this coffee that does a lot to add complexity but is also quite subtle at the same time. It reminds me of the more balsamic-forward Villa Sarchi varietals I’ve had, but WAY more subtle. In the cooling cup there is an apple jelly note that I really like that comes through more in the second half of the sip and into the finish and aftertaste quite a bit more obviously. This coffee has a sweet finish and that apple jelly and papaya sit on my tongue for a long time between sips. Unlike most natural coffees, there are really no fermentation notes that I can pick up here, although I do get some light flashes of an earthy tone in some of my sips. As the cup continues to cool to room temp I am getting some fresh strawberry notes, again, pretty subtle compared to say, an Ethiopian natural, but a nice flavor. I’m surprised how subtle the notes are in this coffee. Being a natural I thought it would be more in-your-face than the washed Private Selection, but it’s quite the opposite, interestingly.
Overall, this is a light, sweet, delicious, candy-like coffee that is a very good drinker. I think it’s worth picking them both up from Theodore’s if you can afford it, as they are quite different coffees, but if your budget tells you that you can only afford one, the washed Private Selection is the way to go, in my opinion. This Noria is good, but the Private Selection was amazing, so at the prices that geshas command, I think that’s the best choice of the two if you have to pick only one.