This is a deep dark and tangy coffee. Little sharp peaks of burnt toast. There's a bitter cocoa flavour underlying it all the way through. I am getting into dark roasts, and they can be bought very cheaply as companies can use the cheapest reject beans and roast them very dark where their character doesn't matter, so there doesn't appear to be much gained from paying the higher prices for a Starbucks brand, but this has an attractive name, and you get a free Tall Latte from Starbucks when you take in the empty packet. It's not without some appeal, but on the whole the powdery bitterness doesn't really seduce me. I'd be interested to try this on a blind taste test, as I suspect I could pull it out from other very dark roasts due to the sharp peaks. This blend was originally composed in 1975 for a Seattle restaurant, Jake O’Shaunessey’s, as a mix of 80% Starbuck's Yukon blend with 20% Italian Roast. The Yukon blend had been created in 1971 for the captain of a fishing vessel as a blend of Latin America and Sumatra beans. The blend for Jake's restaurant was private, but customers who had drunk it, and knew Starbucks supplied the restaurant, were asking Starbucks for it under the name "Jake's blend", so servers would give them beans which were the same blend, but under the name 80/20 Blend. When Starbucks opened their own chain of coffee shops, they launched the blend under the name Caffee Verona.
An acceptable dark roast coffee, though unlikely to become one of my favourites, despite the colourful history.
5/10
 |
Coffee roasts |
No comments:
Post a Comment