Puerto Rico Coffee | What are the Flavor Notes of San Pedro Estate Yauco Selecto AA?

Puerto Rico Coffee | The Flavor of San Pedro Estate's Yauco Selecto AA

Coffee trees were introduced to Puerto Rico from Martinique in 1736. In the early years, cultivation was largely carried out by Corsican immigrants. By 1896, Puerto Rico ranked sixth in the world for coffee exports, with most of its coffee shipped to France, Italy, Spain, and Cuba. Coffee plantations flourished throughout the 19th century, but the rise of sugarcane and pharmaceutical cultivation, together with hurricane damage and the impact of war, brought the coffee industry to a standstill. It is currently recovering.

Puerto Rico operates on a low-wage system, with an average hourly wage of $4.20 in 1991. Even so, manual laborers earned more than their counterparts in many other coffee-producing countries—only Hawaii and Jamaica were comparable. Another challenge facing Puerto Rico's coffee industry is that Puerto Ricans have relatively high educational qualifications within the Caribbean, and therefore better employment prospects elsewhere. Yauco Selecto coffee is grown on only three farms in the southwestern part of the island. Its flavor is fragrant and intense, leaving a long-lasting aftertaste. The coffee commands a high price, with an aroma comparable to any other coffee in the world. In the Yauco region, the coffee is owned and operated by local plantation owners. The mountainous area enjoys a mild climate, which gives the plants a longer maturation period (from October to February of the following year), and the soil is high-quality clay. Some old varieties of Arabica are grown here; although their yields are lower than those of other varieties, their quality is generally high. Growers here have always practiced an eco-friendly, intensive cultivation method, using only low-toxicity fertilizers and chemicals and implementing mixed-crop planting to keep the soil fertile. When harvest time arrives, pickers move among the coffee trees, selecting only fully ripe cherries, which are then placed in drum devices and washed for 48 hours.

Today, Puerto Rico's gourmet coffee is exported to the United States, France, and Japan. The country's coffee is generally carefully cultivated, with pure flavor, aroma, and a heavy body, and its finest lots rank among world-famous brands. The highest-quality coffee is Yauco Selecto, where "Selecto" means "selected." Grand Lares Yauco coffee is produced in the southwestern part of the island, while Lares coffee is produced in the south-central region.

Yauco Selecto coffee beans are stored with their hulls until shipping, when the outer skin is removed to ensure optimal freshness. When goods are submitted, relevant U.S. government personnel, such as from the FDA and USEA, are on hand to supervise whether producers comply with federal regulations. Staff from local evaluation committees also take one bag as a sample from every 50 bags and assess its quality with international measuring instruments.

Jaime Fortuño, president of the Escogido Yauco agency, silently oversees all this work every year, down to the tiniest detail. Fortuño is an investment banker who graduated from Harvard Business School. He originally set out to seize every opportunity to build a Puerto Rican premium coffee market. He expects a maximum annual production of 3,000 bags, each weighing 45 kilograms—less than 1% of the island's total coffee production.

San Pedro Estate, located on the west coast, began producing coffee beans in the 19th century. Initially, the beans it produced were handed over to west coast estates and sold as Yauco Selecto. Today, it sells its coffee entirely under its own farm name, San Pedro, with an annual production of about 1,000 bags.

Yauco Selecto is a fascinating coffee with a full range of flavors, no bitterness, rich nutrients, and an intense fruity taste that rewards slow savoring. Even Taylors of Harrogate in England once imported 50 bags of Yauco Selecto.

Coffee Details

Farm Name: San Pedro Estate

Farmer: Rebecca and Roberto Attienza

Grade: AA

City: Coabey - The highest valley city on the island of Puerto Rico

Region: Jayuya - Located in the mountains of Puerto Rico; the Yauco region lies in the southwestern part of the island

Altitude: 2,500-3,000 feet

Varietal: Bourbon, Typica

Processing System: Wet-processed

Total Pounds: 350,000 pounds

Appearance: 18+ screen

Aroma/Flavor: Grain aroma, drupe fruit, high mountain oolong tea fragrance, nuts, almonds, caramel, hawthorn, sugarcane sweetness, ginseng

Acidity: Smooth, gentle, clean, with slipperiness, oily texture, pomelo, mild low acidity, well-defined layers

Complexity and Other: Very sweet, long aftertaste, medium complexity, island coffee flavor

Brewing Recommendation by FrontStreet Coffee

Dripper: Hario V60

Water Temperature: 90°C

Grind Size: Fuji Royal grinder setting 3.5

Brewing Method: Water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, 15g of coffee grounds. First pour 25g of water for a 25-second pre-infusion. Second pour to 120g of water, then stop. Wait until the water level in the coffee bed drops to half, then continue pouring slowly until reaching 225g of water. Total extraction time is approximately 2:00.

Analysis: A three-stage brewing method clearly defines the front, middle, and back-end flavors of the coffee. Because the V60 has many ribs and drains quickly, stopping the water flow can extend the extraction time.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Coffee varieties, simply put, fall into three major species: Arabica, Robusta, and Liberica. These are the three great original species of coffee, and no coffee grown anywhere in the world falls outside them. Arabica has the most varieties and offers complex, pure flavors, making it the most popular; Robusta has a strong taste and rich crema, and is mostly used in espresso blends and, for many people, in the instant coffee they first encountered. As for Liberica, its low commercial value means only a portion is kept today for research purposes. Nearly all specialty coffee on the market today belongs to Arabica; thanks to its excellent quality and the unique flavor characteristics that develop in different growing regions, countless Arabica single-origin coffees have appeared on the market.

FrontStreet Huakui coffee: The variety behind FrontStreet Huakui is the most common heirloom variety found locally in Ethiopia. Because it blends together many coffee trees of unclassified varieties, the beans vary in size. It carries a subtle floral tone alongside especially prominent fruit aromas. FrontStreet Huakui uses the classic natural process, and in the cup you can find notes of creamy strawberry, mango, jackfruit, citrus, and blueberry—mature tropical fruit tones unique to FrontStreet's Sidamo naturals, which is why it so often leaves a deep impression. It was precisely this rich berry fragrance that won first place in that year's TOH green bean competition. FrontStreet Huakui combines both delicious flavor and an attractive price.

FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Guodingding Cooperative coffee: If FrontStreet Huakui is the representative washed Arabica of Ethiopia, then FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Guodingding is its washed counterpart. FrontStreet's Yirgacheffe stands out among specialty Arabicas for its clean, luminous lemon and citrus character, but look closer and you'll find that Yirgacheffe town actually contains many small villages, each building its own processing station—also called a cooperative—in different places. The station in Guodingding village is the Guodingding Cooperative. FrontStreet's Guodingding beans are Ethiopia's highest grade, G1, processed by the classic washed method, expressing elegant white florals along with citrus, orange, and green tea flavors.

FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No.1 coffee: Most people have heard of FrontStreet's Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, but did you know its variety is Typica? Typica is one of the representative Arabica varieties, the earliest kind to spread from Yemen to India, Indonesia, and Latin America, flowering everywhere it went. Typica beans taste remarkably balanced, mild, and smooth; its acidity is never sharp and its aroma is full and pure, though poor disease resistance and low yields are its greatest weaknesses. Blue Mountain's Typica was transplanted from Martinique to Jamaica's Blue Mountains in the 1820s, and over more than 200 years it evolved stronger disease resistance—particularly against fruit-rot disease—superior to ordinary Typica. However, once Blue Mountain Typica leaves Jamaica, its clean, sweet, delicate fragrance cannot be replicated. After cupping FrontStreet's Jamaica Blue Mountain Typica, we find its flavor balance remains unmatched by any other origin.

FrontStreet Panama Red Label Geisha coffee: The world-famous Panama Geisha presents rich, elegant florals and a full acidity of citrus, peach, and layered fruit in the cup, with a silky, cream-like texture and an aftertaste carrying the sweet fragrance of oolong tea. Its refined flavor makes it feel less like drinking coffee and more like sipping a fragrant fruit tea. Compared with other Arabica varieties, Geisha yields little fruit, the plants are especially delicate, and it is extremely picky about its growing environment. FrontStreet's Red Label Geisha comes from Panama's most famous estate, Esmeralda, situated in the town of Boquete in Chiriquí Province. The fertile volcanic soil, ancient forests, year-round mist, and abundant rainfall create superb coffee-growing conditions—precisely what allows FrontStreet Esmeralda Red Label Geisha to display such impressive layers of flavor.

FrontStreet Brazil Queen Estate coffee: Bourbon, like Typica, is an old Arabica variety, named for the island of Bourbon (le Bourbon) where it was first planted. Bourbon coffee trees have relatively broad, densely growing leaves, and their yields run about 30% higher than Typica; the beans are round and short, making them easy to distinguish. In conventional Bourbon coffee, ripe cherries turn red, but as its planting range expanded, many genetic mutations appeared—such as cherries that ripen to an orange-yellow color, hence Yellow Bourbon. FrontStreet's Brazil Queen Estate was among the earliest Yellow Bourbon ever discovered, with aromas of cream, peanut, toasted bread, and sugarcane—rich, mellow, and clean-sweet. It suits pour-over, moka pot, and espresso machine brewing alike.

FrontStreet Colombia Sidra coffee: Sidra originally came from Pichincha Province in Ecuador, where locals call it Sydra. Genetic comparison has shown that Sidra shares a similar genome with Ethiopian heirloom varieties, leading some scholars to speculate that Sidra is a hybrid of an experimental Ethiopian variety exported abroad and Ecuador's local Bourbon coffee. At the 2022 World Barista Championship, champion barista Anthony Douglas used Sidra beans from a boundary estate in his routine, and Sidra has drawn attention ever since. FrontStreet's Sidra, given a medium-light roast, is loved by many consumers for its florals and tropical fruit—grape, dried fruit, passion fruit—along with a juice-like mouthfeel.