Sumatra Mandheling Arabica Roasted Coffee

About this coffee

Indonesia Mandheling is potent, bittersweet, herbal, and intense ... very intense. If you think a triple pick coffee, a carefully prepared Sumatra, necessarily loses it's Sumatra intensity, then this Lake Toba lot will disprove that notion. This is a pungent, brooding, opaque, full-bore Sumatra. The dry fragrance is intriguingly balanced between sweet and earthy tones, caramel sweetness, pungent notes, and the scent of fresh cut wood at a sawmill. The wet aroma has complex sweetness, bordering on spicy. It has strong chocolate roast tones, with accents of sage and thyme. There's a very intense bittersweetness here too, a bit like butterscotch. I wouldn't call it mossy (a flavour I do not like in Sumatras), but there is something intensely "foresty" about this cup; cedar, pine bark, somewhat resinous, with sweet tobacco and a hint of blackberry. The mouthfeel is juicy. There's a dark herbal note a bit like Riccola drops, sage, thyme. The coffee finishes with an strong, heavy-handed baker's chocolate, laced with tobacco and leather.