S&W Craft Roasting Guatemala Ayarza Wine Series Natural

Good morning and welcome to today’s review of S&W Craft Roasting’s natural “wine series” from Guatemala. No wine is actually added to this coffee, as you’ll see below, and S&W is breaking yet another record on KC Coffee Geek this week, this time for the lightest coffee (that I’ve measured) in a review! Let’s dive right in…

S&W Craft Roasting website

Purchase this coffee directly for $15.45/16oz (yes, a pound!)

Other reviews in this series: Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Organic Single Farm Natural Gelgelu Edema

GUATEMALA AYARZA WINE SERIES NATURAL

S&W Craft Roasting is one of my go-to, favorite coffee roasters for a bunch of reasons. Owned by Nick and Charlie, S&W is located west of Indianapolis in the small town (pop. 555!) of Coatesville, Indiana. S&W is proof that you don’t need to be located in a big metropolitan area, or have a flashy, fancy website and branding, to be top-notch coffee roasters. I like packaging and branding as much, if not more, than a lot of people, but trust me when I say once you get past their simple labeling and old-school website, you will be introduced to excellent coffee at the best value going in the game today. S&W do a lot to control costs and they pass all of these measures on to their patrons. Most of their coffees run about $15, give or take a few cents, PER POUND (that’s 16oz as opposed to the 12oz or even 8oz bags that are so common everywhere else), which is an absolute steal. S&W have been on my “buy anything from them and you’ll like it” list for a long time, and they continue to impress me every time I try what they’re roasting.

The last coffee I reviewed from them, a very nice natural organic Ethiopian, broke our record for having the longest name in a reviewed coffee yet, and this week they’re breaking another record with the lightest (measured) roast! Using the Espresso Vision Roast Vision instrument, this coffee read 35, which is as light as the instrument can read, so who knows if it’s even lighter than that! The Roast Vision uses a scale from 0-35, with higher numbers being lighter. This 35 translates to an Agtron of 120, which I believe is the light end of their scale, too. S&W Craft Roasting call this coffee a “light city” roast on their website, but based solely on visuals, I’d call it more of a “cinnamon roast,” which is the stage before 1st crack. As always, let’s talk about my tasting notes, then discover more about the coffee, just like I do when I try to remain in the dark so my tasting notes have the least bias as possible in them!

My Tasting Notes
This coffee did worry me, a little bit, as I got a distinctly roaster peanut/peanut butter aroma coming from the brewed cup. Grassy notes and peanut butter are both signs of an under-roasted coffee, but aroma doesn’t always tell the whole story. If it was any other roaster, I would think a mistake had possibly been made, that something happened in the roasting process and it didn’t get past “drinkable” stage in the roaster. But, I know S&W has meticulous standards and would never let a coffee leave their roastery if it wasn’t just how they wanted it, so I suspected the flavors in the cup would be something very different. As the cup cooled, the aroma lost a lot of that roasted peanut aroma and was more fruit forward. Taking a sip, this is a light-bodied coffee, and quite subtle in its flavors. Some coffees “drill” into my palate and burst with flavor right from the first sip, and this wine series natural is a lot more subtle. There’s a light, honeyed sweetness here with some “red fruits” coming through in the front of the sip. There’s a bit of ferment here, too, and I can see why this producer includes this coffee in their “wine series!” I’m getting some plum and some red grape in the sip, along with hints of strawberry that grow and develop well into the aftertaste, which lingers for a long time. After about 20 sips or so, the aftertaste builds quite a bit to actually have a stronger flavor presence than the coffee itself, which I think is a first for me. The strawberry note builds substantially, but that ferment note is here, too, along with a little dryness on my palate to give a distinctly wine-like character to this cup. If I look for it, I can find a little peanut in the flavor here, but it’s not off-putting at all to me.

This is an interesting coffee, to say the least. It’s not super-complex, but it’s… weird… in a good way. The body is incredibly light, closer to tea in mouthfeel than coffee for me. The flavors are nice, with ferment notes adding to the fruits to give a wine-like character to this coffee. The coffee sits forever on my palate in the aftertaste, which is more forward in flavor than the actual coffee is, which is a new experience for me and something I quite like. For being a super light and fruit forward cup, there isn’t a lot of acidity here, it’s all red fruits… grapes, strawberries and plums… for me, which is also interesting. I enjoy this coffee for what it is and for it’s weirdness. It’s not a “hit you over the head” natural in the least, but has all the flavors of one, just more subtle. I wouldn’t say this coffee is “muted” either, just subtle. I did try pulling some espresso shots with this coffee, you know me, and I produced some drinkable shots, but it was a challenge and I prefer what I was getting from the filtered pourover cup. A coffee this light needs to be ground just about as fine as you possibly can, and having the variable pressure valve upgrade on my Quick Mill Carola Evo to do a long pre-infusion was helpful, but this coffee is still very difficult to pull well because it’s SO light. I’m not sure it would hold up well to dairy, either, either as ‘spro or filter, so I think this coffee is best enjoyed black. Well, in the cup it’s a pretty ruby red, but you know what I mean! This is the most subtle coffee from S&W Craft Roasting that I’ve had to date, and I think they do a great job with it. This coffee gets a little more concentrated and full-bodied at room temperature and I like the cup more and more as I get to the last drop. Yum!

About the Coffee
This coffee comes from the Cooperativa El Porvenir in Guatemala’s coffee-growing department (like a state here in the USA) of Santa Rosa. This cooperative is a collective of 9 families and 28 farms around Laguna de Ayarza, with altitudes of around 1800masl on average. These farms grow red and yellow Catuai, Pache, and red and yellow Bourbon cultivars. The co-op cups everything constantly, and produced three coffees in their “wine series,” this natural, a washed coffee, and a honey process. I wish I could try all three side-by-side! These coffees are called their wine series because the flavor notes remind them of wines, of course! S&W say this about this coffee, “This is a vibrant, clean cup for a natural process. Aromas of buttered toast or croissant with fruit jam lead into a clean, medium bodied cup with malic acidity. Flavors of rosehips, loganberries, and red currants are accompanied by light sweetness and punctuated by the buttered bread note.”