Carabello Coffee -Maracaturra Box Set
A side-by-side, vertical tasting of the same coffee from three distinct harvest cycles. Maracaturra is a coffee variety. Similar to wine, these varieties differ in flavor and size. The Maracaturra bean is exceptionally large in size as well, which makes it an interesting bean!
The Backstory
Back in 2015, Carabello Coffee sourced a high scoring nano lot (less than 100 pounds) of a maracaturra varietal from the El Ganador section of Finca Un Regalo de Dios in Nicaragua. The El Ganador lot is the pride and joy of Luis Alberto Balladarez, as it was coffee from that section of his farm that garnered him 3rd place and a score of 91.3 in the 2010 Cup of Excellence Competition. It was packaged in vacuum-sealed mylar bags, so as to carefully guard it against oxygen and light, and was one of the most memorable coffees of the year.
In 2016, they once again snagged another nano lot of EL Ganador. But an unexpected thing happened when they went to roast it... they found a sealed, un-roasted 33lb. brick of the 2015 in their storage area! Apparently they had missed it a year prior and never opened it.
As they discussed what we should do, a plan was hatched to store it, along with a 33lb. sealed brick of the 2016, so that they could one day do a vertical tasting of three consecutive year's worth of the same coffee. They loved the idea, but really had no way of knowing if the coffee would hold up over time, and how the aging would affect it. Nevertheless, they sensed they had a rare opportunity suddenly plopped into their laps, and decided to take it.
When Carabello got to selecting coffees from the 2017 harvest, at the top of their list was snagging some of the El Ganador from Luis. But there was one wrinkle they had not expected... he entered it into the Cup of Excellence Competition, and so it was not for sale because it was a finalist coffee and would be sold at International auction! Oh no, the plan is suddenly in jeopardy!
They discussed bidding on it during the auction, but it was just too difficult to make work, so they figured all was lost. That is, until a few months ago when they decided to write Luis to ask if there was any chance he had a secret stash of the 2017 El Ganador that had not sold. Well, as Providence would have it, HE HAD 10 POUNDS LEFT. They asked him if he would send it to the DHL and he agreed. The vertical tasting was on!
When the moment of truth arrived, for them to sample roast all three of these coffees and taste them side by side, they really weren't sure what to expect. But once they tasted the coffees, it was unanimously clear that they had something really special on their hands.
Each person who attended the Vertical Tasting Event at Carabello also got the box set to take home. They brewed up each coffee side-by-side to all the guests to show how unique each one of those coffees was and they got to take a small amount of it home with them.
We needed to create a system in the box that informed the user why this coffee lot is so special and how the weather really impacts the harvest of coffee. We needed a clear way to label each coffee from their respective years.
On the front of the box has an illustration of a coffee plant. When you open the box there is a biography on the producer, Luis Alberto Balladeraz. On the bottom of the box is a photo collage of the coffee supply chain. From plant to roasting.
