Betty Cresswell

Spring is always an exciting time, we have eaten our fill of Easter eggs, the new crop coffees from South America are arriving, and we are starting to taste and make selections from the Central American crop too.

Our last shipment from the Brazilian crop has arrived, cleared customs, and been unloaded at the warehouse. Fazenda Sertão and Fazenda Santa Lúcia are the first on the counter from the new crop with old favourites Santa Inês, Irmãs Pereira, IP, and Sítio Senhor Niquinho following on throughout the year. 

The Bolivian crop has also arrived with coffee from Don Carlos the first on the counter. Unlike the coffees from Brazil, these are small lots, so we expect this coffee to finish within the month and be replaced by Cuchi Gonzales. 

From Peru, Finca El Morito and Huabal will join the counter from late Spring. This year we also have coffee from the Amoju Cooperative. This is our first year with this coffee and we are excited to see what it brings to the Organic Espresso. David Flores (El Morito) has been particularly busy post-crop, making improvements to his processing station which include new fermentation vats, new drying beds, and a greenhouse. He has also started measuring sugar content in the mature cherry, pH of the fermentation, and moisture content in the drying coffee. These quantitative measurements, along with David’s practical experience will help him achieve consistent quality across the crop. 

In Central America, the harvest is ending, and we are making our selections from Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala. With the latest El Niño weather pattern, each country is having its own challenges. In El Salvador, the weather has been particularly dry, and Jose Guillermo (Malacara A), Bobby Ulloa (La Bendición), and Roberto Ulloa (La Divina Providencia) are concentrating on adding more mulch as well as letting the shade trees grow further to help keep moisture in the soil for the trees. In Guatemala, the farmers have had to deal with a cold snap earlier in January and February which slowed down maturation of the cherries, pushing out the harvesting times. 

In Ethiopia and Kenya, the new crops are being dried, processed, graded, and exported. We were able to get our coffee from Suke Quto (Ethiopia) shipped from Djibouti via the Cape of Good Hope which has avoided the problems in the Red Sea. This adds fifteen days to the shipping time, and some added stops, before arriving in Felixstowe. We are delighted to be welcoming Tesfaye Bekele and Genet Shibru from Suke Quto to our shops and roastery this month. We are still making our selections from the Kenyan crop which will include coffee from Alvans Mutero’s farm.

And lastly, for those of us who are sans buzz, we have a change on the decaf front coming up. Decaffeinated Finca La Bolsa will replace Fazenda IP. The next shipment from Fazenda IP is being decaffeinated in Mexico and will be prepared for export to the UK this month.

It’s Spring – there is a lot happening! 

Monmouth x

We are delighted to have Chocolarder chocolate eggs on our counter for Easter. The Cornish Honeycomb is a milk chocolate egg with honey from Cornish beekeeper Matt Pitt, and the Virunga is a dark chocolate egg with cacao from the Femmes Virunga Cooperative in Eastern Congo. 

We have been fans of Chocolarder for a few years now and while we still haven’t managed to get to Cornwall for a visit, we do enjoy our regular catchups on Zoom. We have been impressed with their dedication to quality and singular commitment to making the best chocolate. They make no compromises, add no artificial flavours, emulsifiers, or sweeteners. Everything that can be sourced locally is sourced locally.

Cacao is grown in many countries that also harvest coffee and we often see it growing on our way up a mountain to visit a coffee farm. Both cocoa beans and coffee beans are seeds of fruits that need to be harvested and processed before becoming recognisable as the products we all love. When the cacao pods (the fruits) are harvested, they are cracked open to reveal the creamy coloured flesh surrounding several beans (the seeds). The beans are fermented for ten days or more and then dried. This is the product the farmer or cooperative sells to Chocolarder. From there the process gets complicated!

Chocolarder receive the cocoa beans at their roasting and making site in Falmouth where they are hand sorted to remove extraneous material that has been gathered up with the beans after the drying process on the farms. They are then roasted to a lower temperature, but for a longer time, than coffee. After roasting, the shells surrounding the cocoa beans are removed and the resulting nuggets are now referred to as cocoa nibs. The nibs are ground and conched into a sticky mass of slightly liquified cocoa solids and cocoa butter, which is then mixed with cane sugar (for any bar less than 100% cocoa solids) to make a heady mixture. After the mixture is matured for up to forty days, it is then tempered. Tempering is one of those thrilling actions that combines science and craft—it is also what gives chocolate its snap, shine, and smooth texture.

Coffee and chocolate share many commonalities including the language used to describe flavour. They pair wonderfully together to make an ultimate feel-good-morning or afternoon pick-me-up. If you are looking for a coffee to go with the egg you’re about to crack open, we recommend you choose a flavour profile that complements rather than contrasts. For the Cornish Honeycomb the Malacara A (El Salvador) would be lovely, whereas the Femme Virunga can stand up to the bold fruit of Finca Las Palmeras (Colombia). 

Chocolarder have more information about the farms they buy from and their processes on their website, Chocolarder.com, and at their site in Cornwall they run 90-minute factory tours that look like a blast and would probably have one swooning for a good while after! 

Have a super Easter break. 

Monmouth x