Kona Tabi Champagne Natural

One Roast Day only: Monday, June 9th.

Roast: Light 

Country: USA

Region: Holualoa, Kona

Processing: Champagne Natural

Variety: Tabi

Altitude: 500m (1600ft)

Tasting Notes

powerful fruited aromas lead into a sweet and complex dessert like cup. Notes of strawberry, pink bubblegum, guava, and milk chocolate.

Background Info

Harvested at Kona Heritage farm  in Kona at 1600ft elevation in Holualoa.

Tabi is a coffee leaf rust resistant variety from Colombia. Since the devastating leaf rust disease arrived on Hawaii island in 2020 growers have been trialing plantings of resistant hybrid varieties. The first harvests of these varieties have finally arrived.

Tabi is a hybrid of Typica,  Bourbon and the Timor Hybrid (Typica x Robusta) While most rust resitant hybrids ar compact trees, Tabi is a tall tree like Typica and Bourbon and produces large cherries and seeds. However unlike those varieties it is resistant to coffee leaf rust disease and seems to produce more cherries/tree than either. We have only been able to taste this variety from a couple of farms on the island thus far, but the results are very encouraging. Acidity seems to be higher than the traditional Typica and Catuai grown here and the variety responds well to fermentation producing a very fruity cup when dried as a natural.

Champagne Natural Process

Champagne Natural is a method we began developing in 2019 based off of then new research from Brazil that showed the potential of using selected yeast strains to improve to quality of coffee. We have continued to refine and evolve this process every season through continuous experimentation and cupping.

The process starts with sanitation of the cherries and removing any floating low density fruit. The cherries are then placed in a Bioreactor, covered with water and inoculated with selected wine yeast strains. After several days of fermentation the sugars in the fruit have been consumed and converted to alcohols, acids, and CO2, and also aromatic Esters which can give aromas reminiscent of fruits and flowers. At the end of fermentation the cherries are no longer sweet, but crisp and tart and effervescent from the CO2, tasting like champagne.

The Cherries are then laid to dry on trays in a specially built dehumidified drying building that rapidly removes the moisture from the fruit at low temperatures. After the coffee beans have dried to below 11% moisture they are rested for several weeks in the dried cherries before milling.