Friday Fresh @ 3
Finca Mauritania
El Salvador
Santa Ana
$17/lb.

Aida Batlle continues to perfect the processing of coffee, selecting cherries that have two ripeness levels: burgundy red, which provides maximum sweetness for the coffee, and blood red, which helps provide the Mauritania trademark tangerine acidity. She has a zero-tolerance approach to unripe coffee (she’s been known to jump into a deep tank to pluck one unripe, green cherry), and she’s continued to focus on perfectly controlled fermentation, washing, and drying. She dries only on clay tiles, which she feels gently dry the coffee, leaving sweetness and aroma intact. All this attention to detail and craftsmanship are a real treasure in the coffee industry, and are part of what make Finca Mauritania’s coffee among the most well-crafted in the world.

It’s been an unparralled pleasure to taste Finca Mauritania’s coffee from the 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 harvests. The farm has been through its ups and downs over the years, including an eruption of Ilantapec, the volcano on which the farm sits in 2005! However, Aida has continued to lovingly rehabilitate the farm, carefully pruning the coffee trees and cultivating the soil organically. After the eruption, she learned about new, innovative pruning techniques to help the coffee tress recover and improve the quality of the coffee. From what we taste this year, it really worked.

All this artisanship and focus, along with the generous cooperation of mother nature, have made this year’s Finca Mauritania simply extraordinary in the cup. The brown sugar and caramel sweetness is there as always, along with tangerine fruit. This year’s Mauritania is particularly clean-tasting, allowing the taster to perceive all the flavors perfectly.

Friday Fresh @ 3
Finca Nueva Armenia
Guatemala
Huehuetenango
$17/lb.

This week’s Friday Fresh is a new crop from the Recinos family in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. This is the first in a series of new crops from Central America and we are excited to have entered this new season. Here is what Peter Giuliano has to say about Finca Nueva Armenia…

One of the mountain canyons of Huehue is home to the Recinos family’s Finca Nueva Armenia, a really special coffee farm. Why so special? Well, the farmhouse at Nueva Armenia sits nestled in at the bottom of a high mountain canyon, with steep sides soaring hundreds of feet above it. That’s where the Recinos family planted coffee in the late 40’s, and that’s where it grows to this day. High altitude helps create great coffees, and this is a big reason why Finca Nueva Armenia’s coffees are so great. But that’s only the beginning.

The farm is also dotted with natural springs, which burst out of the mountainsides and provide fresh, crystal-clean water for the farm, the family, and for washing the coffees after fermentation. This is no doubt a big part of the perfectly clean flavor of this coffee.

Perhaps best of all is the sustainable way the Recinos family runs their farm. Finca Nueva Armenia was one of the first certified organic farms in Guatemala; they’ve been farming organically here since the 90’s, which makes them one of the oldest organic coffee farms I have ever heard of. The long, steep hike up to the top of the farm is like a nature walk, with towering old-growth trees shading the coffee.

The forest surrounding the coffee whispers and sings, as birds dart from tree to tree and the odd cow wanders through on its way to one of the pastures that surround the farm. Right in the middle of Nueva Armenia, one of the streams that cross the farm turns into a picturesque waterfall. It’s absolutely beautiful there.

Still, probably the most special thing about Finca Nueva Armenia is the family that owns and runs it, the charming Recinos family. Twin brothers Jorge and Javier have recently taken over management of the farm from 86-year old Antonio, the patriarch of the family. Their respect for tradition and nature are inspiring, but my favorite thing about them is their joyful, open nature.

During my visit there, Jorge proudly showed me the farm and shared his plans for the future, mother Noemi grilled me for details about Counter Culture, and Antonio told tall tales from the old days. I’m so proud and happy to work with this family and roast their coffee.

And let’s not forget the coffee! Finca Nueva Armenia’s coffee is always a treat, and this year is no exception. An especially floral fragrance in this year’s coffee leads to the classic gently fruity, clean-as-a-whistle and balanced cup that has made Nueva Armenia famous. It’s sweet, crisp, and clean – the quintessential morning cup of coffee – and has earned a solid place as one of the best Central American coffees ever.

Finca El Puente
Marysabel Caballero
Honduras
Marcala
$17/lb.

This week we bring back another shop favorite, Finca El Puente. Marysabel Caballero was recentely names on of the “10 Women in Coffee” in the current issue of Barista Magazine. Here is what Peter Giuliano says about the “Purple Princess”, this up and coming coffee star.

Honduras is one of those “off the beaten path” origins. For a number of reasons, Honduras never achieved the notoriety of, say, Costa Rica or Colombia as an origin of great coffees. Some coffee people were incredulous when I began traveling there in 2003, serving on the tasting jury of the first-ever national coffee contest. I discovered then that there are indeed spectacular coffees in Honduras, and over the past few years the coffee industry has become electrified with a number of incredible coffees from this beautiful country.

The queen of these coffees is from a farming family named Caballero, from the western town of Marcala. The family collectively owns and manages a handful of farms in the mountains surrounding the town. One of these farms is called Finca El Puente, or “The Bridge Farm,” owned by Marysabel Caballero and her husband Moises Herrera.

Over the years, I’ve blind-tasted hundreds of coffees from Honduras, and this coffee is my favorite each year. It’s got a unique, incredibly distinct lavender fragrance and purple-fruit flavor, and I can pick it out from a table of lesser Honduran coffees every time. A few years ago, I gave it a nickname: “the Purple Princess,” to signify my affection for this beautiful, regal coffee. It is consistently one of the finest coffees in Latin America, writ large. I’m not the only one who thinks so – the coffee has fared spectacularly at coffee auctions, and it is sought after by a number of great roasters. So, I was especially honored to learn when visiting Honduras this year that the Caballero family had set aside a portion of their crop especially for us. This means a great deal to me, that the Caballeros would reserve such a large portion of their precious crop for us to roast. It’s an honor we hope to live up to!

Greetings from 3CUPS…

We hope you are all enjoying the summer. We’re sorry we’re not open to serve you an iced coffee, but we are busy getting ready to open our new store this fall.

To that end we have 3 Things To Share With You Today…

1. Jay Murrie… we are very excited to welcome our new wine guy to 3CUPS. He brings with him an extensive knowledge and is a great fit for 3CUPS because his philosophy about wine and retail is spot on with ours. Jay most recently managed the wine department at A Southern Season where he worked for 8 years. He has visited many of the small winemakers that we will feature and we are very excited to have Jay join Badi, our coffee guy, in the day-to-day management of the shop.

2. Wine Focus… why does 3CUPS need someone in charge of their wine selection? Because wine is a much more important piece of our new configuration… we are altering our focus from a coffee shop selling a bit of wine, to a wine, coffee and tea merchant. We’ve even changed our name to 3CUPS Wine… Coffee… Tea. Our wine selection is growing from about 40 labels to over 200. Each of these wines will follow the 3CUPS guiding principles, from small vineyards, estate bottled, using traditional techniques and an emphasis on terroir. We will offer wine tasting flights on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings and will resume our monthly wine classes.

3. Location, Location, Location… this week we take possession of our new store at 227 S. Elliott Rd. in Chapel Hill. We are located between Visart on one side and Great Harvest Bread Co. on the other with the ABC store and Locopops just 2 doors down. This is the shopping center near Whole Foods at the bend in Elliott Rd. Its going to take us a couple of months to build the store, but we look forward to opening this Fall. We’ll send periodic updates on our progress. In the meantime, we still offer coffee mail order, local coffee delivery and coffee pick up at Nested in Carrboro. This week’s Friday Fresh is 21 de Septiembre from Mexico, click here for more information.

Thanks for all your kind words and support during our transition this summer. We’re working hard to get open as soon as possible and we are really looking forward to seeing you in the new store.

Cheers…

Lex, Badi and Jay

Friday Fresh @ 3
21st de Septiembre
Mexico
Zaragoza
$17/lb.

This week we feature 21st de Septiembre from Zaragoza, Oaxaca, Mexico. We’ve often had this coffee as a decaffeinated selection, but this time we are sharing the full flavored original. Here is Peter Giuliano’s impressions of the 21st and Oaxaca, Mexico…

The rolling, lushly forested Sierra Madre Del Sur mountain range in Oaxaca, Mexico is one of those really extraordinary places. These mountains have been recognized as special for thousands of years, and were known to the ancient Maya and Aztec civilizations as fertile, almost magical places where crops of uniquely high quality could be grown. When coffee arrived in Mesoamerica a few hundred years ago, it was planted in these mountains, alongside the chocolate-bearing cocoa trees and vanilla vines.

These days, the numerous villages of these mountains grow coffee on small, family-run farms. The highest villages in these mountains seem to exist on the border of land and sky; they perch on the tips of mountains and overlook clouds, forests, and valleys below. It is from these mountaintop villages that the best coffees come—the cool nights and rarefied air help the coffee trees produce sweet, complex coffees with a wonderful, chocolate-cherry quality.

A few years ago, we heard that an association of mountaintop villages with an extremely good reputation for producing quality coffee was breaking away from a larger cooperative to strike out on their own, marketing their high-quality coffee directly and hoping for better prices. We jumped at the opportunity to work with these farmers, who named their cooperative after the date of their founding: the 21st of September.

We’re very proud to be entering into our third year roasting coffee from these farmers, and we have spent the past two years working with the 21st to develop a system of finding and isolating the best coffees from the best farmers, separating and re-combining them to create truly extraordinary, handcrafted Oaxacan coffees. Fortunately for all of us, this unique relationship has produced lots of great coffee, enough to allow us to feature both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffees from this great co-op.

Most of the 21st’s coffee comes from the village where the cooperative is headquartered, the mountaintop village of Zaragoza, about four hours above of the town of Putla. The village is surrounded by forest, and within the forest farmers tend old stands of coffee, mostly of the heirloom Typica variety. The coffee is picked, fermented and washed by hand, and the coffee is then dried, often on the flat rooftops of the village! The coffee then makes its way down the winding mountain roads, past ancient cornfields and cocoa farms, to port. It’s perfect small-farmer coffee and incredibly delicious: the signature flavor of the region is a spicy chocolate note which mimics the spicy chocolate that has made Oaxacan cuisine famous. The coffees of the 21st often have another, delicious, savory fruit note that lends incredible complexity and nuance to the cup.