Coffee Description
This honey-processed offering is stalwart in our cups, solidifying its place as an Onyx favorite. Farmed by the Inga indigenous community, these coffees are intensely sweet, like honey, accompanied by an underlying fruit pulp and floral nature.
Roast Level from the Roaster
Refers to the roast level in comparison with other coffees from the roaster
Medium
Variety
Caturra
Process
Honey
Elevation
2100 masl
Region
Nariño
About Aponte Village of Colombia
The old colloquialism is that it takes a village to raise a child… It also takes a village to produce the macro-lot that is our Aponte Village offering. Aponte Village resides at a mountainous 2100m in the lush region of Nariño. Each year we work closely with our friend Pedro at Pergamino coffee to cup through single producer lots in order to build a large Aponte lot that we feel fits the best cup profile of the region. This year we decided to dig into a deeper level and cup each single producer lot that was flagged for us, getting detailed sensory details on each component. This allowed us to build our full container Aponte lot bit by bit… adding a fruity and wild lot here, and a clean and juicy lot there. Altogether we cupped through thirty-eight single producers lots, eighteen of which were selected to comprise our Aponte offering for this season. Throughout the season, we’ve cupped table after table of these lots, taking care to select only lots that cupped above an 86 on the SCA form, ensuring our macro-lot would arrive at our quality standards. All these producers are located within the Juanambuú canyon, belonging to the indigenous community of the Inga. Their history spans back to the Inca Empire, who colonized the southern region of Colombia in the late XIV century, a bit before the Spanish came. The land here is communal, and its population is ruled by a “cabildo,” a group of elders who ensure that their ancestral laws and traditions are upheld.
Usually, coffee in Colombia is fermented and washed after it’s picked and de-pulped. In this case, the coffee was dried before being washed. The intense fermentation process that occurs when coffee is dried without washing its mucilage (honey-like substance around the seed) leads to a cup profile of intense ripe red fruit that reminds us of cherries and strawberries. This process is very delicate, and if done incorrectly or without the proper conditions can lead to vinegar notes and a terrible cup of coffee. Weather in this region is perfect for this type of drying, as the heavy and cold winds that cross the canyon permit an even and fast drying process of the coffee seed, even covered by its mucilage.
Nariño, Colombia
Onyx Coffee Lab
Lest the myth perpetuate that specialty coffee does not come from Arkansas, Onyx Coffee Lab is blowing that particular urban legend out of the water while creating a few of their own. Husband-wife owners Jon and Andrea Allen have rapidly taken the coffee world by storm with their combination of art and science.
The magic starts with sourcing, with countless small sample batches from coffee importers and with direct visits to farms around the world. "I know direct trade means a lot of different things to different people, but for us if we don’t put money in the producers hands we won’t call it direct trade," says Jon. Once found, the coffees are carefully roasted in twenty-pound or smaller batches, then shared with the three Onyx cafés and over 150 wholesale customers in thirty states.
Clearly Onyx Coffee Lab knows what they're doing: this northwest Arkansas matrix of coffee know-how routinely cleans house at the U.S. Coffee Championships; Andrea Allen placed first in the 2020 Barista Championship, while Elika Liftee placed first in the 2020 Brewers Cup Championship, and they both went on to the 2021 World Coffee Championships to place in 2nd place for Barista and 3rd place for Brewers Cup. Onyx has been chosen by Architectural Digest as Arkansas' most beautiful coffee shop, garnered multiple Good Food Awards, and been described as the "Best bags of coffee you can buy online" in GQ.
