Sweet flavors of caramel popcorn and toffee, brilliant acidity, pulpy fruited accents, red apple, cooling to hints of cinnamon powder and fruited herbal tea
The Baroida Plantation, located in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, was founded by Ben Colbran in the 1960s. Ben first purchased the land from a local man named Taro and they were amongst the first people to cultivate crops in these valleys. In 1965, the government encouraged the early settlers to start growing coffee as a long-term sustainable crop. Ben started to plant coffee trees becoming one of the first coffee producers of the Eastern Highlands. The Colbran Family is now in its third generation with Ben’s son Nichol and grandson Chris running Baroida plantation.
Through either luck or good design, the Baroida plantation sits at the apex of the Lamari river valley and Mount Jabarra range. The plantation itself is at about 1700 meters amongst thousands of hectares of cleared land with former colonial coffee estates surrounding them (now run by native landowners) and flanked by mountains (up to 2300 meters) filled with small holder coffee producers.
In addition to processing their own coffee, the Colbrans buy from some of the small holders nearby and process separately by location. This coffee is from coffee farmers in Urara Village, who are growing mostly Arusha, Bourbon and Typica cultivars. The coffee is delivered to Baroida in whole cherry, and then processed down to the green coffee beans at the estate’s wet mill.
What a sweet cup this Papua New Guinea makes and with convincing, brilliant acidity and moderate top notes in light and darker roasts. The fragrance and aroma show subtle fruit and spice notes enveloped by toffee and caramel candy smells. City and City+ brews have a sweet flavor of caramel popcorn when hot (think ‘Cracker Jacks’) that gives way to pulpy fruited accent notes as the coffee cools, along with a note of red apple. While caramel sweetness is at this coffee’s core, the cooled coffee offers hints of cinnamon powder and fruited herbal tea.
- Origin: Papua New Guinea
- Region: Urara Village, Aiyura, Eastern Highlands
- Producer: Ben Colbran
- Altitude: 1700-2300m
- Cultivar: Arusha, Bourbon, Typica
- Processing: Wet Process (Washed)
- Drying: Patio Sun-Dried
- Sourcing: Sweet Maria’s