This month, MistoBox provided the Table with a blast from the not-too-distant past when they included a really tasty Guatemalan coffee from Klatch Coffee. The roaster coming out of the Box today is also from that time of the year.
Augie’s sent me three awesome coffees back in January and I’ve been looking forward to getting something of theirs under the scrutiny of my spoon ever since.
I obviously never got around to doing that, so my friends at MistoBox provided the opportunity for me—and the rest of their subscribers, for that matter! So. Thanks for that, guys. I hope you picked out a good one for us!
Welcome to my Table, here in the corner of this cafe. Today we’re sipping a cup of Santa Julia El Salvador, from Augie’s Coffee in Redlands, California. Feel free to pull up a chair.
Finca Santa Julia is a really small farm located in the town Los Naranjos, in Cerro El Águila, in the region of Santa Ana. The current owner is Rebeca María Nieto, however its sale is currently being negotiated. The elevation of this farm is 1,400 meters above sea level and its productive area is a little more than 35 hectares.
Finca Santa Julia producesy Bourbon coffee (98%) and the rest of their trees are Pacas variety.
the basics:
origin: Los Naranjos, Santa Ana, El Salvador
farm: FInca Santa Julia
elevation: 1400 meters above sea level
cultivars: Bourbon
process: natural
certifications: standard
the coffee:
Holy Moses, the aroma bursting out of the Santa Julia El Salvador as soon I open the packaging is incredible! Massive notes of watermelon, pink lemonade, caramel, and apple juice collide in the airspace between my nose and the cup. The aroma fills the entire kitchen with a magic that I don’t want my kitchen to lose.
Immediately post-brew, this coffee slides out of the cup with an utterly delicious, creamy caramel and saltwater taffy mouthfeel.
As it starts to cool off, the flavors in the cup simply… explode. This coffee bursts at the seams; fruit bombs pop all over the palate. Huge notes of berries, melon, pomme fruits, citrus, tannins, and red wine dominate the bottom of the cup.
Let me see if I can organize some of the flavors I’m tasting: blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, kiwi, cantaloupe, candy apple, nectarine, clementine, and an utterly gorgeous cabernet sauvignon acidity that is thick, juicy, and bites the tongue with a bit of cinnamon spice in the finish.
Light body; creamy mouthfeel; winy acidity; clean finish.
the bottom line:
This coffee is so…. sexy. It really is. I’ve never used that descriptor for a coffee, but the naturally processed Santa Julia El Salvador, from Augie’s Coffee Roasters, really, really is.
It’s so sweet, so clean, and so refreshing. It is truly a pleasure to have such an intimate experience with this coffee, and the fact that the samples that MistoBox sends are so small really contributes its allure. The fact that there is so little of it makes it seem sort of like a forbidden fruit—I want to brew it all at once, I want to fill my belly with this coffee and nothing else, and I want to drink it as fast as I can. But I know that doing so would more than likely shatter its aura. Mystique. Whatever you want to call it.
This is an incredible coffee. I’d urge anyone and everyone to get their hands on this one.
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Andrew is a husband, father, dog lover, craft beverage enthusiast, content creator, and niche market Internet celebrity. Formerly of A Table in the Corner of the Cafe and The Pulitzer Project and contributor to Barista Magazine and Mental Floss, he’s been writing on the Internet for years.