Coffee Description
Apple, sweetened cranberry, and a hint of allspice fragrance launch this coffee. Look for crisp apple, date, and tangerine flavor notes, along with white tea and caramel. Mild acidity, medium body and a lingering honey sweetness create comfort in a cup.
Roast Level from the Roaster
Refers to the roast level in comparison with other coffees from the roaster
Light/Medium
Variety
Caturra
Process
Washed
Elevation
1600-2000 masl
Region
Cajamarca
About Maria Clarita Vasquez Rojas of Peru
High in the mountains in the northwest corner of the Cajamarca region, Maria Clarita Vasquez Rojas grows some very special coffee. In this area of Peru, smallholders tend to work with cooperatives or sell in the city, and much of the production is organically grown. While this has brought benefits to specialty coffee—quality, buying structure and market reach, small producers tend to get lost in the shuffle if they don’t join a co-op.
However, independent growers like Maria are producing some killer coffees, and roasters are developing their own direct trade relationships or working with specialty importers to brings these stellar offerings to the U.S. In the case of this coffee, Red Fox Coffee Merchants sourced this special micro lot from Maria for Onyx Coffee Lab.
Cajamarca, Peru
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.
