South America Reviews
We found 773 reviews for South America. The reviews below appear in reverse chronological order by review date. Older reviews may no longer accurately reflect current versions of the same coffee.
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We found 773 reviews for South America. The reviews below appear in reverse chronological order by review date. Older reviews may no longer accurately reflect current versions of the same coffee.
"Dull, flat, and dry," complained one panelist. "Dirty background," wrote another. A heavy, monotoned coffee with authority, but lacking resonance and range.
The subtle balance of sweetness, acidity and softly ingratiating fruit notes are promising for espresso. The thin, underdeveloped body and herbal and grassy notes are not. Grassiness is a typical sign of a coffee rushed from processing to cupping table. Perhaps, with longer repose, this coffee will round out and lose its green edge.
Distinct chocolate or sweet cocoa notes provide the main intrigue in this soft, fragrant coffee. "Buttery toffee, love it!" exclaimed one panelist. The rather thinnish body is probably what relegated this nicely nuanced coffee to the middle of the ratings.
An intriguing, complexly nuanced coffee that suffered from inconsistency. Panelists responded positively to its richly nutty aroma and sweet floral and fruit notes. A disturbing astringency surfaced in some cups, however, depressing the final rating.
A striking one-third of the panelists described the aftertaste of this sweet, clean, fruit-toned coffee as "resonant," a seldom-chosen term. That response may suggest why this coffee scored the second-highest rating in the cupping despite its limited nuance. It displayed impressive dimension, an echoing space around and behind initial sensation.
A complex, subtly nuanced coffee, light-bodied but softly and sweetly acidy, embellished with fruit and pronounced chocolate tones. I tasted papaya in the finish. "Deep & lush," wrote one panelist on aroma. "Slight tobacco. Leafy." Apparently balance and seductive grace notes carried this delicate coffee to the top of the ratings.
A distinctively sweet, fruity Colombia. The fruit hovers on the edge of ferment, but to my palate remains safely on the lush but chocolate-cherryish side of the defect divide. The nose is perfectly clean: sweet, light, cocoa-like, the acidity nicely balanced between sweet and dry tones, the body medium to fullish.
Rich with a low-toned, vibrant acidity. The body is creamily smooth, though a touch lighter than the heaviest-bodiedBrazils in the cupping. Here the sweet spice tones characteristic of natural Brazils are buoyant and floral, almost Yirgacheffe-like in their perfumes. The floral tones linger sweetly in the aftertaste.
Displays a rich, deeply matrixed acidity reminiscent of the best Sumatras. Although the cup is not quite as sweet and roundly ingratiating at first sip as some others in the cupping, the acidity sustains power as the cup cools, hence the somewhat higher rating for this coffee compared to those with comparable sweetness and body. A slight edginess to the acidity may indicate a scattering of cherries that were close to ferment as the coffee dried, but this shadow fault, if present at all, is so faint that it strikes me as a quibble. A fine coffee well-roasted.
A hard, nasty ferment mars an otherwise sweetly rich profile.
Very sharp, carbony cup, with little richness or sweetness. Both aroma and body seem burned off the coffee by the rather aggressive roast. I also tried this coffee as espresso. In the demitasse it remained sharp, but softened and sweetened a bit in milk.
A dullness, perhaps a shadow defect from rain-interrupted drying, shadows an otherwise splendidly sweet profile. The sweetness, enlivened by spice and chocolate, almost sneaks out from under the hardness at the finish, but never quite makes it. Too bad.
Either an over-aggressive roast or a drying-related defect in the green coffee deadens a promising profile. Satisfying body and richness, but little sweetness or nuance.
For me this coffee lacks sufficient sweetness to support its attractive tobacco, spice and floral notes. Sweetness in dry-processed coffees like this one comes from sustained contact of the bean with ripe fruit during drying. The profile-flattening lack of sweetness here may derive from too many green or unripe cherries in the mix.
An impressive tribute to the tactile dimension of taste: the body is smooth, buttery, alive yet full. The profile is sweet and deeply dimensioned with a pleasantly spicy tickle at its heart, but remains rather limited in range. The aftertaste reveals the merest hint of hardness.
Judged on aroma alone, this coffee easily would top the ratings. Intense, deeply dimensioned nut tones soar with an exhilarating sweetness. In the cup, however, things quiet down quickly. A heavy, low-toned acidity dominates a profile complicated by interesting spicy and smoky notes, but without much lift or dimension.
Some cups display a muted but disturbingly hard off-taste, probably a fault in the drying. The clean cups are low-key, sweet, with a pleasant, round earthiness and excellent resonance or dimension.
For an espresso this coffee is relatively light-roasted, allowing cup characteristics of the green coffee to emerge in the demitasse. The vanilla-nut tones characteristic of many Brazil dry-processed coffees weave pleasantly through the profile, appearing with particular clarity in aroma and aftertaste. Unfortunately, the herby, earthy sharpness of some dry-processed Brazils also surfaces, especially in the aftertaste. All earthy peccadilloes disappear in milk, however. The sharp, earthy tones mute, the nut tones bloom, and the entire profile relaxes and turns sweet yet forceful.
It wasn't entirely clear whether it was a thin, attenuated quality that put this semi-dry-processed coffee near the bottom of the cupping (three reviewers explicitly used the word "thin"), or an off-taste too subtle to be called a defect but unpleasant nonetheless. I called it a "baggy hardness"; three other panelists also used the word "hard" to describe it; others used close synonyms like harsh and bitter. On the positive side, several praised this coffee's sweetness.
Perhaps this coffee was betrayed by our sample roasting. Four of ten reviewers mentioned burned or smoky tastes that may have been owing to a rushed or overdeveloped roast. Two identified a fault that may be associated with the coffee and not the roast -- a slightly medicinal or harsh character. No grace notes were cited, although the term "soft" came up frequently as usual. I was definitely in the minority with this coffee: I felt it required patience, but developed nicely: "At first heavy but nondescript, but then a gentle, light, levitating sweetness dances off the top," I wrote.