Sweetwater Organic Coffee Roasters. “High Spirits” Holiday Blend 2012

I love, I mean really love, finding new, small artisan producers of one of my favorite products, and it is all the more sweet when that producer happens to be in my home state (Florida); this happens often with cigars, but rarely with coffee. That is why I was so excited when my wife brought a pound of Sweetwater Organic Coffee Roasters’ High Spirits Holiday Blend back from a recent trip; the coffee is roasted just a few hours up the road in Gainesville, FL.
It is a light roast blend of African and Central American coffees and the flavors are exceptionally understated (in a very good way); I would place it as one of the most relaxing cups of coffee I have enjoyed in quite a while. There are great milk chocolate notes, soft fruit flavors, a great mouth feel and an almost perfectly balanced acidity, and, like icing on a cake or crema on espresso, they also seem to have impeccable business ethics!
I would highly recommend checking these guys out, you can find them at www.sweetwaterorganiccoffee.com and can order directly from their site. This is the first of their roasts I have tried, but, I promise you, I will be sampling some more in quick order and will post my thoughts on those soon.

World’s End “If Six Was Nine” 2009

Okay, I admit it, I am a through and through music junkie. It is a life long passion, and occasionally problem, and it has conditioned me to be exceptionally sensitive to music references in marketing; when they are done poorly, as they most often are, I find it difficult not to track down the marketing “expert” that came up with the idea and let loss every bit of pent up angst I can muster, but when done well, as I have pointed out before, it is pure bliss. World’s End’s If Six Was Nine is pure bliss. Seriously, the marketing, the wine making team, and especially the wine itself are truly superb.  The wine is a Bordeaux style cover of a California Cabernet Sauvignon reserve, meaning, of course, it also has a bit of Merlot and Cabernet Franc and I certainly won’t complain.  The mouth feel is like velvet, the flavors range from tobacco and leather to the most pleasant strawberry tart I have every came across in a wine (really, not a bit annoying and definitely not jammy). Grab a bottle, enjoy it with the best guitar track you have, as the name is a Hendrix reference, and remember that this is only the lower end of their line, and trust me that is a great thing.

Chateau Potensac 2008

The 2008 vintage, from Bordeaux, has been largely forgettable to me, but for some reason there have been a few stand out Medocs. Many of these have been surprisingly modest in price, with the 2008 Chateau Potensac being nicely indicative.  With a blend of primarily Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon,  with a good amount of Cabernet Franc, the wine comes through with rich dark fruits, mainly blackberry and black cherry, nicely varied earth flavors, and a hint of bread and espresso.  This is not the most amazingly complex Bordeaux,  nor the one you will remember forever,  but it is balanced, rich, and definitely of quality, and it shows the potential to improve for, perhaps, another decade.

Joe Van Gogh “Cafe Femenino Blend” 2012

There is a lot to be said for a quality coffee with a clever name, there is even more to be said for a coffee with solid ethics, so what do you say about a great coffee with a name that, while a touch cliche,  is fun and clever and an ethical stance that is almost unmatched? The answer is you start by trying it then you tell everyone about how great it is! It is impossible not to tell people about Joe Van Gogh’s (a little cliche, but fun and clever, right?) Cafe Femenino Blend, it is a fantastic quality organic, fair trade coffee that supports a great charity.  This is a muli-region blend that has clean spice, cocoa and smoke notes with a pleasant, understated, sweetness; the charity is the Cafe Femenino Foundation,  which started in 2004, in Peru, with the aim of enhancing the lives, and increasing the visibility, of women in coffee production around the world. The have grown substantially since then and are definitely an organization worth supporting; you can find more information about them here: www.coffeecan.org. So you really can not lose with this one, a great coffee supporting a great cause; it doesn’t get much better.

Chateau De Ferrand 2008

I want to be honest up front with this one, the 2008 vintage in Bordeaux is one of my least favorite of the last ten or so, but, having said that, the 2008 Chateau de Ferrand is a solid, enjoyable wine. It carries a lot of the hallmarks of a Saint-Emilion red and has an intriguing, dominant pomegranate flavor, which sounds irritating,  but was truly pleasant.  Be sure to decant this one as it is young and a bit tight, but I do not think it will improve all that much with time, at least not enough to justify cellaring for long.

Casa Lapostolle Clos Apalta 2003

Casa Lapostolle’s Clos Apalta is a Chilean red blend that happens to be one of the most intense wines I have ever consumed. Do not get me wrong, Clos Apalta 2003 is quality through and through,  with oak, lots of oak, and a plethora of dark fruit notes and I recommend it readily with a warning. Do not expect this to be a gentle, elegant red for it is bold, too bold for many, and it has the ability to overwhelm the senses.  I primarily drink so called elegant wines, that are soft on the senses, whose flavor takes time and air to build to a delicate crescendo,  but I do occasionally open a bottle such as this, just as I occasionally order the hottest curry on the menu, so I can experience my senses running at full bore and see how long they hold out before they give in.

Counter Culture Coffee No.46

There is not much in the world that is more opulent, and less acknowledged, than good artisanal coffee, and there has been an explosion of quality producers in this area in recent years. One of the leaders in the world of artisan coffee is Counter Culture Coffee and they produce a wide variety of amazing single origin and blend coffees. Their No.46 is perhaps their best known, and I would argue one of the best out there, blends; it is typified by an immensely satisfying richness, complimented by a light sweetness, that round out the chocolate notes that dominate the brew. This is considered a European style blend due to the mixing of light and dark roasts to achieve greater depth, oh, and it happens to be certified organic.

Orin Swift “The Prisoner” 2009

This is a wine that I can not recommend highly enough. Orin Swift has been one of the most creative, and consistent, wine makers in the world for several years now. this is his Zinfandel blend and it just pops with flavor, I do have a preference for the 2008 and 2009 vintages over the 2010, but I would not say the 2010 The Prisoner is bad by any means, just not quite as good.