Santa Fe, New Mexico was one of the places I was able to visit in the period between Christmas and New Year’s Eve this past winter, and while coffee sourcing wasn’t my first priority (family time was!), I did make a little bit of an effort to see if there were notable coffee roasters/cafes within a reasonable distance of where we’d be that week. On our one afternoon in Santa Fe, largely spent at the Georgia O’Keeffe museum, I found that Iconik Coffee Roasters had a cafe location just blocks from the museum, so I convinced my family to take a little side trip there before we left town. The Lúpe location (on Guadalúpe St.) was a combination coffee shop/bookstore, so it was pretty much heaven in my eyes!
The name of this holiday blend (Luminaria) attracted me – what a beautiful sounding word! It turns out that there is a regional connection here; Merriam-Webster defines a luminaria as “a traditional Mexican Christmas lantern originally consisting of a candle set in sand inside a paper bag.” We saw quite a few of these during our time in New Mexico, and they’re quite beautiful when lit!
(Photo from the ABQ Trolley Co.)
(Photo from visitalbuquerque.com)
(Photo from TripAdvisor)
Whole bean: These beans smelled strongly of blueberries and rich chocolate. Delicious!! The bag noted that this was a blend of Guatemala Honey (honey-processed, I presume?) and Ethiopia Natural so the scent was very much what I expected.
V60: Dark chocolate flavor in the cup with a lovely fragrance of blueberry. Very sweet aroma. This cup, I made with a 3:45 extraction time – on the longer side of what I normally aim for with the Hario V60, but it tasted great.
Chemex: This method, my extraction time was a little on the short side (only 3:36). There was more of a berry flavor in this and less chocolate, but it also had a little bit of a pithy/bitter character to it at first that I didn’t care for. It subsided a bit as the coffee cooled, though.
French press: This was heavy on the chocolate – it tasted like melted milk chocolate with just the barest hint of berry flavor. It really was mostly cocoa with milk (though I hadn’t added any milk at all).
AeroPress: Quite similar to the French press cup.
Summary: Chocolate and blueberries don’t exactly scream “holiday” to me – I think it’s a flavor profile that’s great ANY time of year, not just in the winter months! – but regardless, I liked this blend a lot. Go for an immersion method if you like more chocolate flavor in the cup, or the V60 if you like more blueberry flavor in the cup. I wasn’t wild about this coffee in the Chemex as I think that method brought out notes that made this coffee unbalanced.
From the roaster: No tasting notes provided
Iconik Coffee Roasters Online Shop (link goes to their whole bean coffee offerings, sorted in a drop-down menu)
Review conducted 9 days post-roast.