Thursday, July 06, 2006


the shimmering lavender

woke up this morning, jumped outta bed, dragged a cafetiére across my head. . .anyway, i plunged up a small pot of jessica marshall's batdorf "shimmering lavender," her new fair-trade, organic gedeo-zone yrg.

i love grinding this coffee: it really does smell like lavender as it fall from the burr into the hopper. the coffee's about 9 days old now, and i still love to open the bag just to smell the beans.

there's a clearly "stone fruit" smell when you do -- jessica says peach, i say apricot nectar -- we all agree it's somewhere in that range. the stone fruit also comes thru clearly when the water hits the coffee and it blooms.

as you'd expect from a good yrg, there's a pleasant winey taste. not only does the shimmering lavender have a medium-heavy, almost velvety body, it also offers a wonderful milk chocolate aftertaste.

i loved this coffee with just a litte raw sugar, too, altho' those for whom the winey taste takes getting used to might try a dash a milk to mute that until they develop a better appreciation for it.

this reminds me of something oren once told me, that when some customers were new to his amazing finchwa, they would at first wonder if the milk had turned in their coffee!

well, i shouldn't make fun of them -- after all, there's always a first time for experiencing winey in coffee! as the coffee cools, the winey-ness becomes stronger and a delicate lemon curd feeling emerges.

if you're a big yrg fan, as i certainly am, this is just a lovely example. thanks, jessica!

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posted by fortune | 7:55 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments