On Saturday, Jan. 30 and Sunday, Jan. 31, beginning at 9 a.m., we will be offering tastings of several coffees, including: Caravan Coffe's Omar’s Blend, Kauai Estate Reserve, Stumptown's Roaster's Rwanda Muyongwe, Zoka, and Coffee Roasters Kenya AA Thangathi. All are brewed in our Chemex and French Press coffee pots. Come back to the wine department to try some new coffees and hopefully find some new favorites.

This week there are some delicious new coffee arrivals from Portland’s own Stumptown Coffee Roaster. We’ve slurped, smelled and sampled and here are the final tasting results:

First, the Rwanda Vunga, which I was personally told by the folks at Stumptown that I needed to try because it will change my life. What can I say, Stumptown is passionate about coffee. Anyway, the Rwanda Vunga is made from the Bourbon coffee varietal. This coffee is grown between 1500 and 2000 meters elevation near Rwanda’s Lake Kivu. The coffee expressed a deep and rich flavor with notes of chocolate, raspberries, molasses, hazelnuts and graham crackers. A full bodied, yet elegant cup is available for 16.49/12 oz bag.

The next arrival on our list is the Ethiopia Michelle; these beans come from an elevation of 1700-1900 meters and are comprised of an Ethiopia Heirloom varietal. As per Stumptown this organic coffee comes from the Michelle Cooperative in Yirgacheffe, comprised of 2191 small coffee farmers cultivating on 2900 hectares. We found their dedication to traditional methods to bring out flavors of melon rind along with floral notes in the front of your palate followed by rich chocolate and roasted walnuts to finish.

Don’t miss our free coffee tastings this weekend:

Wandering Goat Sumatra Gayo Mtn., Stumptown Rwanda Vinya and Ethiopian Yirgacheffe No. 2. All coffees French pressed or Chemex drip brewed.

We are in the midst the holidays and the seasonal coffee roasts have made their way to 29th and Willamette. These coffees are a wonderful treat in the early morning. Robust, rich and full-bodied, they are sure to warm you through this cold winter weather. They are also perfect in the early evening with accompaniments, such as chocolates or gingersnap cookies! Just sit back, relax and enjoy a cup of coffee, and above all else share with friends this holiday season.

From our local roaster Wandering Goat we have their Solstice Blend. It is a rich, full-bodied blend that will warm your soul. It is a rich, robust blend, full mouth feel with notes of: cinnamon, nutmeg, graham crackers, milk chocolate and hazelnuts. You can find this 12 oz bag under our bulk bins for 11.99.

In the town of Olympia, Washington we have brought in Batdorf & Bronson’s Holiday Blend. This coffee has notes of sweet tobacco on the nose followed by burnt sugar, caramel, nilla wafers, and roasted walnuts on the palate. This 12 oz bag of coffee is available for 10.99.

In conclusion, the final seasonal blend we brought in is from Newberg, Oregon: Caravan Coffee’s Christmas Blend. This holiday blend starts of with a hint of toasted marshmallows, followed by cinnamon and hazelnuts and finishes with cocoa powder. Look for this one in our bulk bins for 11.99 lb.

From Andria: As Marni and I made our way to the Stumptown’s question-and-answer panel recently, I was excited to finally hear – from the source – all about Direct Trade. Many have heard about Fair Trade and Direct Trade, but I was eager to hear true “players in the game” explain it.

Among the panel was Aleco, Stumptown’s coffee buyer, who is responsible for the purchasing and quality of the coffee, as well as the oversight of its Direct Trade program on four continents. Here’s a basic run-down for how Stumptown’s Direct Trade system works:

1. Relationships with small farms and co-ops are nurtured with investments of time and knowledge about how to produce truly remarkable coffee at a quality level, far surpassing that of the past. This equates to time and money from both sides, but the end result is pure heaven in a cup! Stumptown’s coffees are some of the best I’ve ever tasted and their efforts really shine through in their products.

2. Because of the exceptional quality, farmers can now command higher prices. This means not only becoming economically successful, but also gaining a new motivation for producing higher quality coffee, harvest after harvest. This can ultimately have a dramatic effect on the entire coffee market. If quality goes up, so will consumer demand, thus elevating the market to higher standards for both consumers and producers.

The most noticeable difference between Stumptown’s Direct Trade program and the standard Fair Trade program is the fact that Stumptown has set records for paying some of the highest prices per pound of coffee ever recorded. ($12/pound in Nicaragua at the Los Delirios farm and $21/pound in Panama for the single-origin Esmerelda Especiale, just to name a few.)

There are many details in between related to farming practices, drying techniques for the beans, storage and separation of the beans, etc., all of which contribute to the end-product level of quality. On the panel were farmers from Kenya, Costa Rica, and Columbia who explained some of new and improved techniques and practices.

It was great to hear, straight from the farmers, their enthusiasm about their products, as well as the improvements they're making, their knowledge and practices.

Marni has written the following about two of the single-origin coffees and their tasting notes, which we were able to try.

From Marni: Among those who were on this panel was Ngatia Kanyoge from Karatina de Nyeri, who explained Kenya’s process from the harvest of the cherries through the sale of the beans directly to Stumptown. This traditional, dry-method process includes: hand sorting, pulping, and a double-fermentation, followed by washing and air drying of the cherries before the coffee is ready to be exported.

Once this process is completed with the utmost care, the beans are sold through a second window at auction. This second window allows Stumptown to directly trade with Mr. Kanyoge. The coffee beans coming from his estate are from an elevation of 1,700-1,800 meters from varietals SL34 and SL28. SL34 is a mutation of the Bourbon varietal, and is more resistant to heavy rainfall, while SL28, a mutation of Bourbon, Mocha, and Yemeni Typica, has a smaller crop yield but is more resistant to disease than the native varietals. By combining these two coffee berries the resulting cup of Kenya Gaturiri Reserve has more notes of citrus, blackberry, graham crackers, cinnamon and a long sweet caramel finish.

Costa Rica has taken the process of washing coffee cherries to a whole new level, and the government is very concerned with the amount of water needed to ferment and wash the mucilage from the beans. First, the beans are pulped, then soaked in water, and finally washed. This process uses a lot of water, so they have started to use mechanical demucilaging methods (which scrubs the berries instead of fermenting). Then there’s soaking and washing.

The whole process in Costa Rica has gotten a facelift recently to help cut down on the carbon footprint the industry is generating. When drying the beans, the milling plants either dry on racks, flat concrete or bricked areas in the sun but are more often pumping hot air over the beans to dry them. These same plants have started using solar power to power the coffee driers. The wastewater is being cleaned through water treatment plants. And the discarded husks are turned into charcoal. These modern techniques are blended with traditions to produce a rich yet more environmentally friendly cup of coffee.

The Costa Rica Cafetin 1900 is composed of varietals Caturra and Typica at 1,900-2,000 meters, which give the cup brighter acidity, heavy mouthfeel, notes of floral, chocolate, cherries and peaches.

Enjoy!