The newest Reserve Starbucks Coffee (coming soon, December 16th) will be a Colombia Montebenito small-lot coffee. I went to a coffee tasting for this coffee on the 9th and thought I’d share that experience here. Coffee Master Corey (at the University Village 3 Starbucks) lead us through a tasting for the Colombia, pairing it with the Starbucks chocolate covered almonds.
Corey prepared a French press of the Colombia. We walked through the four standard steps of a Starbucks coffee tasting, which are as follows:
- Smell
- Slurp
- Locate
- Describe
The aroma of this coffee had lots of cocoa notes and some lemony acidity. One person in our group noticed that as the coffee cools, the aroma gets a little more floral. I noticed that the body of the coffee was light to medium. Everyone thoroughly enjoy this coffee’s flavor: lots of nuttiness, cocoa flavor notes, with a gentle and bright acidity.
Our coffee tasting group really liked the Colombia with the chocolate covered almonds. The almonds seem to mellow out the lemony acidity notes and this pairing really brought out the cocoa, nuttiness of the Colombia. Several people in the group thought the coffee even enhanced the chocolate covered almonds!
This coffee is coming soon! Hope you get to try it. I’ve also heard that a Sulwesi coffee is coming soon as a Starbucks Reserve coffee – I will keep you posted as I get more information.
Enjoy!
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i’ve been very surprised at how few dark roasts have come to us as a Reserve store. lots and lots of Latin American blends, but i don’t think we’ve had a true dark yet. (Sumatra Peaberry isn’t as dark as i expected.) any idea why this is?
Jenn in Ga- On my phone, sorry so sloppy and abrupt. I think the Reserves are generally roasted much lighter than core coffees in order to enhance the origin flavors and so that you’re not tasting the roasty-ness of the roast profile.
Reserves probably have more reliable flavors as well so they can trust roasting them lighter. Roast level is a trade off between roast flavors like caramel and sugar notes, and bean specific flavors. Balance is key. The larger the batch the less specific the bean flavors are liable to be.
Though I think they have dark roasted most of their geisha coffees it seems. I hope that changes the next time around.
I just tasted this at the roastery last night! I had it as a mocha with their lovely whip creme and chocolate shavings instead of syrup. It was heavenly.
This sounds like an interesting coffee to try. I hope some African Reserves come back soon though. Melody, I’m enjoying the blog posts as usual and hope to visit the Roastery someday.
Will this be available online?
@Rene – It’s possible it won’t be. Coffee is a farm product and if one harvest is small of a crop, there isn’t enough always for online sales in addition to in store sales. I don’t see it yet on StarbucksStore.com – I can only suggest that you try to find a Starbucks Reserve / Clover store – There are about 600 of them now.
[…] Here’s an early coffee seminar that I attended for this coffee in December 2014. Note, that while the coffee was available in numerous Reserve stores outside of the Roastery, the beautiful blue card with the sun-like image on it was only available the Seattle Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room. […]