Coffee growers generally employed two dominant strategies to amplify or multiply the flavors their coffees can produce. One is varietal diversification, introducing new genetic materials whose flavor profiles are different from those already found on the farm. The other is post-harvest processing innovation. At Finca Chelín, a century-old coffee farm perched high in the hills of Oaxaca’s breathtaking Sierra Sur, Enrique López has done both with abandon. This lot features both a new variety and a new post-harvest process.

Wonderful, memorable coffee has always been a source of comfort and intrigue for us, starting with the peace of your morning cup as the world wakes up. As we ease into all things holiday, we are rather tickled to be part of what we hope will be a rekindling of traditions that may have floated away, and whose return this year will perhaps be sweeter for their absence over the past few years. It is in that spirit that we offer the 27th version of our heralded Celebration Blend.

This is a Geisha, the world’s most elegant coffee cultivar, from a shaded grove high in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca. It was grown by Enrique López at Finca Chelín. Like many other growers we work with, Enrique produces different flavor profiles by processing his coffees in different ways after they are harvested. But Enrique is unlike any other grower we work with in at least one regard: he has more than 20 distinct post-harvest processes, many of which challenge common wisdom to achieve uncommon results.

Kenyan coffees are widely respected by coffee tasters for their vibrant acidity and best-in-class sweetness, which collude to deliver what is arguably coffee’s most exhilarating taste profile. Known for their tendency to present loads of blackberry, currant, and grape-like flavors alongside soaring citrus notes, Kenyan coffees have a well-earned place among the world’s greatest.

This coffee comes from the small village of Alaka, where it was grown in a primary forest, in the shade of giant native trees. This is coffee’s native habitat, the place in which it was born to thrive. The combination of perfect growing conditions with scrupulous management of harvest and processing detail is the reason this natural lot from Alaka can be so profoundly flavorful and expressive while maintaining the precision and clarity of a washed coffee and bearing the flavor of its terroir.

Ask the Pérez family what they do, and they’ll tell you coffee is in their blood. They are fifth-generation coffee producers, known to specialty coffee fans for producing expressively sweet and floral coffees. Through multiple Cup of Excellence awards and longstanding DT relationships, this family has upheld, expanded, and refined the reputation of coffee in Acatenango, Guatemala.

Gesha Village is a breathtaking coffee farm in a remote zone of Ethiopia considered the birthplace of the Arabica coffee species.  It is at once both old and new.  Venerable heirloom cultivars from a bygone era grow there under a towering canopy of ancient, indigenous trees.  It is a throwback to the pre-industrial past when coffee trees grew wild in the forest and evolved on their own, without human intervention. 

This is our first year embarking on a relationship with Los Volcanes Coffee, a team of mission-driven coffee professionals exporting coffees representative of the Antigua region of Guatemala. Though this is the first year their coffee has found its way onto our menu, it is years in the making. We have spent years talking with them, walking through their projects, and evaluating coffees with their team to find the best selections from the projects they manage.

There is no place on earth that produces more tantalizing, sublimely flavorful coffees than Ethiopia. The coffee quality game has been rigged from the start: there’s Ethiopia, and then there’s everyone else.  The incredible range of tastes found throughout the country is a reflection of the harmony that exists between the noble coffee tree and the environment in which it was born.

The “natural” process is easy to explain.  After the coffee cherry is plucked from the plant, it is immediately set out to dry.  Over a period of several weeks, the water evaporates slowly from the cherry, which darkens and shrivels until it looks like a little black pod.  Once it is fully dry (a moisture content of about 10 percent), the hardened cherry skin is mechanically removed and the seeds within are sorted by size and density.