Origin Stories of Organic Coffee Beans_Varieties Introduction_Organic Coffee Prices

The Origin Story of Organic Coffee Beans

Meticulously Hand-Selected, 100% High-Altitude Coffee Beans

In coffee, higher altitude generally means better quality. Yet many beans sold today under the Arabica label do not actually come from high ground.

Organic coffee, by contrast, is pure Arabica grown at altitude. Every bean is picked by hand and carefully tended. To avoid cross-contamination, we produce only organic coffee, and back it with more than thirty years of roasting experience to deliver a stable quality everyone can enjoy with peace of mind.

Fighting Pests with the Food Chain — and No Pesticides

No pesticides are used. Instead, the principle of the food chain keeps the coffee pest-free. To control the borer known as Broca, organic coffee requires cultivating a particular wasp that suppresses the pest, successfully solving the disease and insect problems of organic beans. The result is coffee that is relatively complete and beautiful.

French Roast

French Roast comes from New Orleans, where roasters often use pans to roast coffee because it gives the most complete and intense flavor.

French Roast is Cafe Altura's heaviest roast, made with the finest Arabica beans, whose green coffee originates in the Sierra Madre mountains of Chiapas, Mexico.

Heaviest roast or not, there is not a trace of unpleasant bitterness. Our French Roast beans show a deep, rich dark brown color with glistening natural oils. We roast very carefully to avoid the burnt, bitter notes that come from over-roasting. In the cup it is layered and free of acidity, and the coffee's sweetness lingers as it reaches the throat before the whole mouth fills with a rich milky aroma that carries up to the nasal cavity. As the cool winter draws near, a cup of French Roast organic coffee is enough to settle the whole body.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Coffee falls into three original species — Arabica, Robusta and Liberica — and wherever it is grown, it stays within those three. Arabica is by far the most varied and offers complex, clean flavor, which is why it dominates specialty coffee; Robusta is bold and oil-rich and mostly goes into espresso blends and instant coffee; Liberica has little commercial value and survives mainly in research. The specialty coffees you drink today are almost all Arabica single-origins, and their quality and regional character are what made so many of them famous.

Among FrontStreet Coffee's Arabica line, the FrontStreet Huakui is an heirloom Ethiopian variety: with many distinct trees mixed together, the beans vary in size, and the natural process brings out cream strawberry, mango, jackfruit, citrus and blueberry, with the ripe tropical character that defines a Sidamo natural — the same lush berry aroma that won it first place in that year's TOH green bean competition. For the washed side, the FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Gutingding Cooperative is a G1 Ethiopian coffee with elegant white florals, citrus, orange and green tea.

For the classics, the FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No.1 is a Typica — one of the archetypal Arabica varieties, first carried from Yemen to India, Indonesia and the Americas, and transplanted from Martinique to the Jamaican Blue Mountains in the 1720s. Over more than 200 years it developed better disease resistance, especially against coffee berry disease, and a balance of flavor that few regions can approach. The FrontStreet Panama Red Label Geisha, meanwhile, comes from the celebrated Esmeralda Estate in Boquete, Chiriqui Province, where fertile volcanic soil, old forests and year-round mist create its lush floral, citrus, peach and oolong-tea complexity. Rounding out the range, the FrontStreet Brazil Queen's Manor is the earliest-discovered yellow Bourbon, with cream, peanut, toast and sugar-cane notes, and the FrontStreet Colombia Sidra — a variety that drew attention when champion barista Anthony Douglas used it at the 2022 World Barista Championship — is roasted medium-light for florals, tropical fruit, grape, dried fruit and passion fruit.