Green Coffee Beans

Colombia Supremo

Spectacled Bear

1 pound Green Coffee Beans

Specifics:

• Name: Seasonal Select 18 Plus Spectacled Bear
• Origin: Colombia
• Region: Narino, Bucaramanga, Popayan, Huila, Other regions
• Processing Method: Fully Washed

Cupping Notes: Fruity, sweet, rich.

About this Coffee:

The Seasonal Select allows Cafe Imports to purchase only the best cupping coffees from Colombias superior growing regions. The coffee is an exeptional, large screen Supremo, and customers who purchase the Seasonal Select participate in the conservation of the Spectacled Bear, one of Colombias most endangered species.
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this product will be donated to the Wildlife Conservation Society. For more information on WCS and their work with Spectacled Bears, check out www.wcs.org.

The following is from the Cafe Imports Site about this coffee.

Our Colombian Supremo Seasonal Select Spectacled Bear is back!!!

That's right, Spectacled Bear, not Speckled Bear. What's with the name, you ask?...

Cafe Imports Matt Hupton came up with this idea a few years back and designed the program to give something back for this coffee that isn't known to be sustainably-grown. Doing research on Colombia and the native animals there, we ran across the cute Spectacled Bear, named such because he looks as if he's wearing spectacles!

So, we call the coffee the Spectacled Bear and we donate money from the sale of this coffee to the Wildlife Conservation Society (www.wcs.org) to study and help save the Spectacled Bear, which is endangered.

This coffee comes to us from different growing regions in Colombia, based on crop cycle and cup quality. We've seen coffees from Huila, Medellin, Narino and Cauca fill this label.

Here is just some general info about Colombian Coffee:

Colombia

Colombian coffees are well balanced, medium bodied, and bright. They are also the most highly marketed coffees in the world. Everyone knows Juan Valdez. The Coffee Federation of Colombian has done an excellent job of connoting in the American public's mind that Colombian coffees are the "richest coffees in the world."

Does Colombian coffee deserve this praise? The answer is both yes and no.

Colombia has done a very nice job at bumping up the quality of its average beans and produces an above average grocery store or restaurant coffee. A lot of Colombian coffee, however, is not that truly special. On the other hand, a lot is praise-worthy. The task is to search out the exceptional among the merely decent cups.

Colombia is just starting to market and sell its coffee by region and finca, as opposed to just the "Colombian Mountain Grown" label. To be honest, I think that since Colombia was so successful at marketing the country as a whole, it was a latecomer to the micro-region vintage model of coffee marketing.

Overall, no reason to tell you to try Colombian coffees, since, if you drink coffee, you already have. But make sure not to discount Colombian coffee as the smiley face of the coffee world. Top-notch vintage coffees are there, just have to request them, instead of just saying, "Colombian coffee please" when you order coffee at your local coffee house.

A final note: Supreme and Excelso are bean size descriptions, not cupping profiles, growing altitudes, or anything else. Supremos are bigger than Excelos, but these names do not mean anything on cup, per se. Basically they are the names that the Coffee Federation came up with. Just something to keep in mind!