On sipping Finca la Soledad Urrao

BBC international business correspondent Peter Day reports from Medellin and remembers some of the great coffees of his past.

Colombia: Home of the perfect cup of coffee? - BBC News:

" ... an encounter the other day with perhaps the most delicious cup of coffee I have ever drunk. Like Marcel Proust tasting that little cake, the Madeleine, my cup of Finca la Soledad Urrao brought it all back. I happened to be in the city of Medellin in the hills of Colombia, the second largest coffee exporting nation in the world.

... the coffee I was sipping as I looked out over Botero Plaza from the cafe called El Laboratorio de Cafe, the Coffee Laboratory, where they serve what is said to be some of the finest brews in this famed coffee region. Though brew is the wrong word.

A precise barista weighed out the beans, from a named finca, or estate, in the regional hills. She ground them not too fine, and then decanted them in a filter.

Using water at 90C, certainly not boiling, she poured it out in tiny amounts from a thin-stemmed kettle over the coffee, waiting for it to pass into the glass pot before adding a little bit more.

And then the savouring as it was poured into the cup. The smell. The taste. No milk, no sugar, no need. It was delicious, quite delicious."



'via Blog this'