Black Moon Chiroso Lot. 75

Chiroso belongs to Urrao. It is the variety that put Antioquia on competition tables, an Ethiopian-descended landrace that Colombia found first and has been quietly protective of ever since. Black Moon grows it in Panama, which is the whole reason this bag is interesting before anyone tastes it.

The farm is Hunter Tedman's own project and it sits apart from his agronomy work at Hacienda Barbara. Black Moon is built around soil before it is built around yield. Regenerative management, biodiversity raised deliberately — the working theory being that what happens in the ground under the tree decides more than anything that happens in a tank afterwards. It is a slow argument to make. You cannot demonstrate it in one harvest, and while you are demonstrating it you are farming a variety that most of the market cannot yet price.

Chiroso is long and thin in the bean, closer to a Geisha in shape than to anything Bourbon derived, and it is notoriously difficult to read on the roast because that geometry moves heat differently. Grown outside the region that made its name, this one comes out darker than the Colombian expression. Urrao Chiroso tends toward citrus and white flower. This is not that. It has gone deep and red instead, and the natural process has run with it.

Blackberry leads, dense and dark, with real weight behind it. Dark cherry sits beneath and pushes the whole thing further into the low register. Violet runs floral through the middle and is the one place the variety's usual lift shows. Orange tea closes it out dry, tannic in a way that keeps it from turning jammy.