Aponte Village Honey

The name 'Aponte Village' is a super familiar coffee name if you've been buying specialty coffees over the past 5 years or so with some big name roasters frequently landing these lots and having them be a staple in their lineups.  This year, thanks to my homie Ana at Cofinet, lil Enjoy was able to secure some of this textbook, juicy, honey processed goodness.

In Cofinet's words: Produced by smallholders in rural areas in Aponte, Nariño, most of the coffee growers we work with belong to an indigenous reserve called Aponte. We work with approximately 200 coffee growers from different associations across this region. Coffee farmers who are part of this Microlots program started creating Honey processed coffees in 2018. They have achieved great success with this method due to the low volume of coffee they process this way. In Aponte, producers have mastered the art of Honey processing as they have been producing Honeys for 3 consecutive years now. Growers’ production is very small and relative humidity is low. This helps the process as not much space is required, and coffees dry much faster compared to other coffee producing regions.

But, you may ask yourself, what is the honey process exactly?!  We view the honey process as a mid-point of sorts between the natural and washed processes. In the honey process, the coffee cherries are picked, and depulped as they are in the washed process, but, the coffee in mucilage (sticky fruity sugars and stuff) is set out to dry as opposed to getting fermented off and set to dry just in parchment.  This added contact time between the fruits sugars and seed adds a LOUD sweetness to the cup when done well. That said, this processing method carries risk as well and when done poorly, or if things go awry, the entire flavor of the coffee will be dulled down.  We don't see many honey processed coffees come out of Colombia outside of Aponte which is pretty wild. 

So, what's in the cup?  This Aponte Village is textbook execution in my eyes. A super approachable and familiar macro-Colombian coffee profile but with the sweetness and body turned way up.  This coffee has a sticky and chewy mouthfeel that feels nectar-like.  While hot, berry and tropical fruit aromatics jump off the cup.  Notes of raspberry, guava and orange marmalade are balanced out by raw brown sugar and light caramels.  This is a gem and brews well in ALL THE WAYS.  Dig into this special mass-appealing coffee and explore a great example of the honey process.