From the Panamanian pioneers at Finca Don Pepe, we bring you Panama, Don Pepe AKA the Don, our first Special Release coffee for the year . Located in the foothills of Volcán Barú overlooking the picturesque town of Boquete where they have grown coffee for over 120 years. This washed Java variety has an elegant floral aroma with a juicy acidity that gives way to complex citrus fruit flavours of sweet orange and lime finishing in a lingering floral cocoa.
We have visited Finca Don Pepe and Don Tony (farm manager) a few times over the years and have been eager to work with them to showcase their coffee. We’ve reorganised our procurement slightly to help facilitate this, and now we get to share one of their exceptional coffees with you.
These Special Release coffees (previously known as ‘Limited coffees’) are the ones we like to make even more of a song and dance about. Typically, these small lots of coffees are the farmers’ pride and joy. Dust off your stamp collection, because the first 100 online orders will receive two limited edition Don Pepe New Zealand or Australian post stamps. Yeah, we're bringing stamps back.
Panama Don Pepe is available now, you can grab your bag here.
¹Finca (noun) is, quite literally, Spanish for farm. Not only is it totally appropriate in this context, but it also sounds way more speciality than saying ‘farm’. i.e. Mr Don’s farm.
²Special Release is when we release (finish roasting, bag it up, make available to the world) something special (even more special than an everyday/always available coffee), from time to time.
³Foothills is like the base of a hill. ‘Here we stand, at the foot of this hill’. Two or more hills would, therefore, possess foothills, plural.
⁴The Volcán Barú is an active stratovolcano (this needs its own footnote aye?) and the tallest mountain in Panama, at 3,475 metres high. That’s like 10.7 Eiffel Towers on top of each other.
⁵Boquete is a small town on the Caldera River, in western Panama. The American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) - yes, that’s a real thing - named it a top retirement spot.
⁶A very long time.
⁷Washed (adjective) is a method of processing coffee. The coffee cherries are picked, de-pulped, fermented and then washed clean prior to drying.
⁸Varieties are different kinds of coffee. They’re all a seed, but there are lots of different kinds of the seed. Similar to apples, there are: Gala, Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Winter Banana (confusing, we know), Splendour, Monty’s Surprise, Braeburn, Pacific Rose, Ballerina Bolero, Ballerina Polka, Ballerina Waltz - the list goes on and the names only get better.
⁹Aroma’s (noun) meaning, when used in the ‘coffee world’, is no different to that when used in the non-coffee-world i.e. “Mmmm the aroma of that freshly-baked bread is delicious”.
¹⁰Juicy (adjective), describes the full, fruity flavour of the coffee. Also, a Biggie Smalls anthem.
¹¹Complex (noun) is a common tasting note in coffee. It means it’s made up of lots of interrelated parts. It’s also another word for a building. So, here we’re saying there are lots of different citrus flavours on top of each other, kind of like the floors of the shopping complex down the road from you.
¹²Lingering (adjective) Normally lingering refers to people who stay well past their welcome, but here, this is a positive. The flavours just keeps on giving.
¹³Don Pepe is the name of this coffee and the finca it hails from. Don is similar to the English use of ‘Mr”, but in Spainish it has a title of respect attached to it. Watch Narcos, you’ll understand.
¹⁴Procurement is the process we go through to obtain the coffee. Two years ago we visited Finca (see footnote 2) Don Pepe for the first time. Here. we cupped the coffee and loved it. This year we received fresh samples from Don Tony, which we roasted and then cupped in New Zealand. They passed the test and now we’re ready to share Don Pepe with you.
¹⁵Exceptional (adjective) unusual; not typical. Extraordinary, out of the ordinary, delicious (we added that last one in, but trust us).
¹⁶Limited means confined within limits. This doesn’t accurately represent these coffees, so we’ve renamed them Special Releases, because that’s exactly what they are - special. And don’t you forget it.
¹⁷Song and dance is a frequently used idiom, often used to show one is making a fuss of something. “Man, Coffee Supreme really are making a song and dance about that delicious new Panama, Don Pepe coffee”.
