Thank God For Girlfriends.

It was (as I think I mentioned in my last post) mine and my girlfriend's three year anniversary on Sunday (whoop!)! She is the epitomy of a Coffee Widow, but bless her, she got me a box of coffee for my present. Now, she'll admit she knows nothing about coffee, except what she's been forced to pick up just to pretend to understand me, so I opened the box with some trepidation. I was pleasently surprised to find, not the generic, 100% robusta crap that I was scared of having to taste, but some interesting looking, 100% aribica Fairtrade stuff. Each coffee comes with tasting notes, a little info on the farm it comes from, some other great little tidbits.

There are three different coffees:

• Indonisia Somatra Lintong
• Papua New Guinea
• The Premium Blend (a blend of Gayo Organic Coffee Farmers Association, Indonesia; La Central de Cooperatives Cafeteleras de Honduras; Empresa Cooperative del sur del Cauca, Columbia)

With these coffees I plan on just playing about. I'm going to have a go at some cupping, and try them as espresso and cappuccini. I might even post some of the stuff on here. But it looks like some good stuff. Just a quick flick through the tasting notes throw up some really interesting flavours, such as "a deep smokey spice flavour", winey flavours with floral notes, and the one I'm really excited about, a spicy opening with caramel or toffee notes developing on he pallate.

Like I said, I'll try and get some cupping sheets made up for these coffees and put them online. Hope it's of some use to you guys :)

Cheers,
Seamus