I am resuming my rather non-existent blogging with the post about Starbucks latest seasonal offering - Sumatran Lake Toba and Siborong Borong. We are very lucky this time around to have not one, but two coffees. Both of the them are coming from the same region in Sumatra, however, they subtly differ.
Yesterday during the District Meeting we had a comparative tasting of the both species. This glorious sunny morning I decided to find out more about the country of origin.
There is some stuff from Wikipedia:
"Lake Toba (Indonesian: Danau Toba) is a lake and supervolcano, 100 kilometres long and 30 kilometres wide, and 505 metres at its deepest point. Located in the middle of the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It is the largest volcanic lake in the world.[1]In addition, it is the site of a supervolcanic eruption that occurred about 75,000 years ago, a massive climate-changing event. This is the largest known eruption anywhere on Earth in the last 25 million years. According to the Toba catastrophe theory to which some anthropologists and archeologists subscribe, it had global consequences, killing most humans then alive and creating a population bottleneck in Central Eastern Africa and India that affected the genetic inheritance of all humans today."
Wow! Pretty heady stuff, I guess one of the reasons that the Lake Toba coffee doesn't have any acidity whatsoever, in my opinion, is because coffee trees are grown on the volcanic soil, which is very reach in minerals as oppose to products of organic decoy.
This is how the experts of Dallis Coffee describe the cup:
Full bodied, with a smooth syrupy mouthfeel, earthy notes of tobacco, leather and spice mingle with savory green peppers and lush red fruits.
Another coffee - Sumatra Siborong Borong. Compared to Lake Toba, it is tangier with the hint of acidity and sharper herby notes.
"The Batak people have lived in the Lake Toba area for centuries and are referred to as Toba Batak. Their faith combines Christianity and indigenous beliefs. Sumatra Siborong-Borong coffee was cultivated almost entirely by Batak people.Batak women pick only the ripest cherries and then pulp and wash them, all by hand. The wet parchment is set out to dry in the sun on tarps or woven mats in front of their houses. This coffee is sorted by hand and delivered to mill the day after harvest to ensure freshness.
Locals brew their coffee Turkish-style—sweetened with sugar." (source - starbucks.ch)
I can easily picture this: with the backdrop of sunset - flaming orange sun and purple sky, the cafe(kedai) with few wrinkly and dark from merciless sunshine faces, who laugh and swear, play chess and sip thick syrupy coffee from tiny cups. Smoke from their clover(CLOVER, my dear Lord!) cigarettes mixes with heavy intoxicating aromas of the wet forest. Women quietly smile and knit. (Well, maybe they don't knit because they don't need to - it's constantly warm enough to wear just cotton shorts and straw hat, but I want them knit - it better suits the mood.) Couple of Sumatran cats, short haired and slender, snooze on the porch.
Mamma Mia, heaven! Paradise! What have you done to me, Siborong Borong?
Happy tasting, people!
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