Rodin Villatoro • Natural-Processed Bourbon

Recommended Roast Level

City (Light)

Tasting Notes

My relationship with natural coffees has been love and hate. For a long time I couldn't get enough of them, then the world of anaerobic and co-ferments came and everything was too boozy or fake for me. I think producers like Rodin have learned to do both traditional natural coffees and anaerobic well and can leave co-ferms with someone else.

This coffee has me firmly back in the natural camp. It has the fruit character you'd expect, but it never overwhelms. It's restrained in the best way. Soft ube sweetness, the delicate body of a white tea, and this warm brown sugar finish that just sits on your palate. The whole cup seems to work together perfectly...nothing fights for attention. That's Rodin. The guy is meticulous from pick to patio, and you can taste the difference between someone who manages a natural process and someone who just lets it happen. This is the kind of cup that makes you rethink what Guatemala can do outside of the washed tradition his family is already known for. We're proud to have it.

-Matt

Punta Del Cerro Coffee Production

When I (Matt) was at Punta Del Cerro in February of '25, the farm was seeing its busiest picking / processing day ever. I think I counted 12 Toyota pickups in the driveway alone, all full of cherry ready to be processed.

The next morning, we were called over to watch Rodin sort the naturals, washed cherry & the anaerobics. He was measuring the sugar content of the cherry before picking, targeting higher levels than most producers. Once it's picked, the whole cherry goes straight onto concrete patios and gets spread thin. A couple of guys watched the patios all day and turned them with rakes so they never dried unevenly and then they would cover them at night so they don't take on moisture. That process runs about two and a half weeks until it drops to around 11 to 12 percent moisture content.

The second morning we came outside and it looked like rain. Someone on the trip asked Don Aurelio what they do when it rains. He grabbed a rake and said, "Here...big piles!" So that's what we did. All of us spent the next 45 minutes raking cherry into big piles to protect it. That's the reality of natural processing. All that careful, methodical work Rodin puts in can get undone by one bad rainstorm.

Highlights