GROWN IN CALIFORNIA

If you're a fan of Hawaiian coffee, you will love this Catuaí Rojo from Knopf Knoll Ranch in Carpinteria, CA. California Catuaí Rojo has an almost Kona-like quality: it's a soft and sweet coffee with delicate notes of milk chocolate, caramel, and almond cookie.

Knopf Knoll Ranch sits in the foothills of Santa Barbara County near the beach town of Carpinteria, where a rare subtropical coastal microclimate does something remarkable: the region's cool ocean influence, relatively low elevation, and northern latitude combine to mirror the growing conditions found at high-altitude farms in the traditional coffee belt. 

Coffee fermentation is something most people don't think about, but it's a critical step in the process of turning cherries into the drink we all know and love. For this Catuaí, we fermented the coffee cherries using yeast inoculation, a technique borrowed from wine making. We use a commercial yeast called LALCAFÉ INTENSO, developed by Lallemand — a company with deep roots in the wine and beer world — not to manipulate flavor, but to standardize our fermentations. This coffee was hand-picked at peak ripeness, floated to remove defects, inoculated with that yeast, cold-fermented for 72 hours, washed to bare parchment, and slowly dried on raised beds for two weeks to a stable moisture below 11%.

Catuaí Rojo is a Brazilian-bred cross of Mundo Novo and Caturra that is prized throughout the Americas for its sweetness and balance, both of which are on full display in this Californian expression.