Christmas Coffee? Could It Be?

      Hello readers! As I have consumed coffee over the years, I have learned it is important to branch out of your normal blends of coffee, and try something a little different. With this in mind, I decided to do a tasting of Blue Bottle Coffee’s Bella Donavon Blend. I’m going to spoil the next couple of paragraphs just to say that this coffee was an incredible treat. As it sat in the French press, waiting to be poured into a simple porcelain cup, I could see delectable drink slowly transforming itself into an adventurous tasting session. With this being said, I guess I should begin to share my experience with the coffee.

              

    I learned of the Blue Bottle Coffee Company due to a video emailed to me by the wonderful Kathy Godfrey which interviewed three coffee companies who roast their own coffee. Each of these companies, Lamill Coffee, Handsome Coffee, and Blue Bottle Coffee provides excellent blends, roasted to perfection, all of which I can’t wait to try. It was impossible to choose between which of these I wanted to start with, so I did eeny-meeny-miney-moe, and ended up with Blue Bottle’s Bella Donavon.

               

       

     Bella Donavon is described by its manufacturer as having heavy, comforting, and deeply-fruited attributes. The thought I immediately got was a heavy wool sweater coffee, which reminded me of Christmas, which sent me to possibly the best Christmas song, Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. This is all the research I decided to do before taking a sip because I didn’t want any pre-conceived notions to sway my opinion on this blend, so with Christmas in mind and a sweater as a garment, I took my first sip.

BAM!

               

       It wasn’t Christmas, but it was some heavy comfort that rested itself onto my palette. It was a mixture of a little bit of the delicious bitterness of a good coffee with a weight that kept the bitterness in check; the balance between the acidity of the coffee and the fullness of its flavor immediately made me want to drink a gallon or two. Sadly, I did not buy enough beans for a gallon, so I stayed with the twelve ounces of Bella Donavon.

               

          As I sat, contemplating how I could characterize this coffee musically, my computer began playing a new artist that I had recently acquired called The Venetia Fair. I looked to what song was playing, and believe it or not, the song was titled Only In The Morning. I would like to warn you that this song is a bit heavy, but I couldn’t help it. This song seemed to be a godsend. It’s almost too heavy at the beginning, but the chorus lightens up the mood, adding that little bit of, for the sake of comparison, acidity which is needed to balance. By acidity, I’m referring to the lead singer, Benny Santoro’s vocals. They’re almost high-pitched, but they don’t get to that screech that makes you want to tear you ear-holes apart.

       So that is that. Sorry for the length of this post, but I couldn’t help myself. If you would like to purchase some of Blue Bottle’s Bella Donavon, go to their website: http://www.bluebottlecoffee.com. If you would like to watch the video that I watched which introduced me to this company, here is the link. If you want to check out Venetia Fair, here is their Facebook page. Thank you for reading!

Nathan