Sapsucker Espresso

Buy Sapsucker here.

DIRECT TRADE PARTNERS
Metad | Ethiopia
Mauricio Rosales, La Maravilla | Guatemala

REGIONS
Chelchele, Gedeo Zone | Ethiopia
La Libertad, Huehuetenango | Guatemala

CULTIVARS
indigenous Ethiopian varieties, Caturra, San Ramón

ELEVATION
1600-2100 m

HARVEST
December 2020-March 2021

LOOK FOR
Cherry | Caramel | Orange

The Sapsucker is a migratory bird with a sweet tooth, programmed to seek sugar. In its single-minded pursuit of sweetness, it taps into trees for their sugary sap and frequents orchards where it can slurp up the sweet nectar of fresh fruit. It is hard to imagine a more fitting spirit animal for our cupping team: like the Sapsucker, we chase sweetness and cherish fruit acids in our coffees. Which is what makes assembling our Sapsucker seasonal espresso blend such a labor of love.

The 2021 edition of our Sapsucker blend is made with two of our favorites from the Northern Hemisphere, one smallholder lot and one estate lot.

Since our team has been working with each of these components for the past few months, we had a pretty good idea of the shortest path to maximum sweetness. The blend is built on heirloom varieties grown by smallholder farmers in the village of Chelchele in the Gedeo Zone of Ethiopia, whose coffees are prized for their complexity and celebrated for their juicy citrus, stone fruit, and floral notes. The Ethiopia lot in this year’s Sapsucker was processed by METAD, which has become a reference point for quality in coffee’s oldest origin.

That lot is complemented by an estate lot from one of our longest-standing Direct Trade partners, Mauricio Rosales. La Maravilla is the farm he built with his father and maintains with his son. It clings to steep slopes in the western highlands of Guatemala around La Libertad, Huehuetenango, where we have been visiting him since 2003.

18 g in | 55 g out | 30 seconds