Leonides Castro

This selection from producer Leonides Castro Garcia was the highest scoring lot we tasted on our recent sourcing trip in Oaxaca and was an immediate ‘must buy’ for our ongoing Limited Release series of coffees. Expect to find sweet stone fruit and tart berry flavors and a noticeably juicy quality that transitions into a gentle spiced note in the aftertaste. We’re finding that these characteristics become quite a bit more expressive after a few weeks off roast, with the coffee really opening up to reveal additional layers of sweetness, nuance and complexity.

Everything we look for when buying coffee is present in spades when it comes to Leonides’ production: single variety separation and simple, low-intervention washed processing. This lot is comprised entirely of Pluma, a regional descendent of Typica, one of the oldest and most important of coffee varieties. For processing, ripe coffee fruit was handpicked, pulped, and underwent a 24-hour fermentation in open wooden tanks before drying for 4-5 days on patios and woven fiber mats called petate.