Sprudge.com

Sprudge.com attended two top-notch public cuppings in the last few days, led by Peter Giuliano and Aida Batlle, respectively. Both events took place at the Counter Culture Coffee Training Center in Manhattan. Our first feature focuses on the Finca Nueva Armenia cupping we attended, led by Peter Giuliano.

The idea of “public cuppings” has come under fire by a number of roasters and industry types, people who feel as though the ceremony is “intimidating, inaccesible and far removed from how consumers drink coffee at home.” While the last of those three points may is inarguable, you wonder if detractors and public cupping naysayers have ever been to a CCC cupping. They are lively, energetic, wildly educational affairs, and there’s nothing else quite like them for getting people really focused on the coffee, regardless of industry experience of background.

Peter Giuliano’s cupping focused on three coffees from Finca Nueva Armenia, an organic farm Counter Culture has been working with for years. It’s run by two twin brothers, Jorge and Javier Recinos, and in the beginning of Counter Culture’s relationship with their families they were an immensely difficult farm to reach: no cell phones, no email, no wi-fi on the farm, and most daunting, no history of selling to buyers from the West. Kim Elena Bullock and Peter undertook lengthy efforts to contact and cultivate a buying relationship with these farmers, a relationship that has paid off big dividends in the cup.

Located in the Huehuetenango region, directly on the other side of a mountain from Stumptown’s beloved and widely revered Finca El Injerto, Nueva Armenia boasts some dramatic elevation changes within the farm itself, and several distinct microlots come from throughout these elevations. Peter Giuliano told us, “We often put together cuppings that reflect a certain concept. We might cup the components of a blend, or we might build a cupping focused on varieties.” That’s exactly what we did with this cupping, which featured three coffees from across the farm: a macrolot Finca Nueva Armenia, comprised of choice coffees from around the farm, and two microlots, the “Gemelos”, who gets its name from a unique planting procedure that “twins” two coffee tress in one plot, and the “Grotto” microlot, which comes from the highest part of the finca.

There’s something really progressive about cupping your way around one single farm, though the three coffees we enjoyed were wildly different from one another. Some of the consensus tasting notes included dried plums and tamarind for the Gemelos microlot, basil, blackberries and tart cherries for the Grotto microlot, and a much rounder set of flavors for the “main lot” coffee, which tastes of chocolate and dried apricots.

Mid-point through the cupping, Peter summed up why Counter Culture is so excited about this farm, and why they hope it becomes more of a household name in the industry:

“Every year, the coffees from Finca Nueva Armenia have gotten better and better and better. The microlots this year are the best coffees to ever come from this farm. And philosophically, this is exactly the kind of farm we want to do business with in high-end coffee – one that is systematically getting better and better each year. Plus, it’s an environmental wonderland. Nueva Armenia is one of our most important farms.”

Stay tuned for the second part of this feature, which focuses on four of Aida Battle’s “signature” microlots, from Fincas Mauritania, Kilimanjaro, Los Alpes and Tanzania.

You can learn more about Nueva Armenia here, and explore the Grotto microlot here.