Description
Damarli Estate Noble coffees are the top lots, very high scoring coffees and the best the farm has to offer. Higher rated coffees are often exotic and high acidity, including this one. A very fruit forward coffee with moderate acidity. Not for everyone but those who love a fruit forward complex cup will love this cup. Imperial Honey, this is a fermentation treatment done to process the beans. They put the full coffee cherry in tanks with special yeasts to get a perfect level of fermentation, then they pull off the skin of the fruit before it hits the drying trays. Flipping it often while making sure it does not dry too quick or too slow. A lot of care and love went into these beans.
We made a new friend last season with Damarli Estate and boy is it paying off. Keith Pech, owner of Damarli Estate has some family in the U.P. (Michigan) and passes by our warehouse from time to time visiting his family. Keith is really on the cutting edge of Panamanian coffee, he won the Best of Panama this year for his Imperial Pacamara!
Tasting Notes: Similar to many of the other stellar Panama naturals, this cup is pretty winy and floral at the lighter roasts. A rounded cup, meaning medium body and medium acidity at most roasts. The Bourbon strain being a little winy itself comingles very nicely with the more grape-skin fruity factor that Keith’s natural processing leaves on the beans. Some acidity for sure but not over the top, add more floral than citrus. These beans handle the lighter roasts well. Medium roasts start to bring a more semi-sweet malty tone to the front end, gets stronger quickly as you progress the roast, easy to cover up the more delicate features if too close to 2nd crack. Dark roasts get a bit smoky and strong, hard to see the fruity factor until the cup cools but still provides and interesting profile that most of us found tasty.
Roasting Notes: A little trickier to roast but most should be able to find a good roast pretty quickly. A bit higher chaff and just slightly uneven roasting. Still a gem of processing for a natural. The big trick is the color can be a little deceiving, watch for the expansion in size and the chaff coming off to mark first crack, it can look a bit darker than it is.
Damarli Estate is a specialty coffee farm located in Boquete, Panama. The estate dates back to 1995 when David Pech, a photographer in the United States and his wife Lia Pech (Ruiz) bought the farm from a bank foreclosure. Lia’s family, the Ruiz family, had been heavily involved in the coffee industry in Boquete for four generations; thus David and Lia were encouraged to get involved with the family industry as well.
Damarli, as a name came from a combination of the original investors: David and Lia and David’s father and mother (Manfred and Ruth Pech) – DA- for David, MA- for Manfred, R – for Ruth and LI – for Lia.
The estate was planted in 1996 and began to produce in 2001. For over one decade Damarli Estate sold the raw coffee cherries to Casa Ruiz, which was Lia’s family’s coffee business. In 2014, David and Lia’s son Keith moved from the United States to Panama in order to begin a new project at Damarli Estate. This was the beginning of a new chapter for the beans.
Keith began to identify all the unique coffee varieties that were grown at Damarli Estate and market them internationally. Keith and David began to process their own coffee at the estate in a way that would create sweet and unique cup profiles that had little to no water waste. They built a house on the estate to accept visitors, a new mill and drying beds to process all the coffees and a coffee tasting lab to accept international buyers. Damarli Estate is a beautiful farm filled with tropical birds, tall canopy forests and enchanting sunrises.
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