Drink of the Week: Verve Coffee Wilder Blend

The folks at Verve Coffee Roasters in Santa Cruz have long put an emphasis on the exciting variability found in coffee by highlighting seasonal, single-origin beans. With their annual Wilder Blend, they take the opportunity to really color outside the lines, and this year’s release lives up to the name. With an experimental mix of Colombian and Ethiopian beans, the Wilder Blend is an absolute fruit bomb sure to shake up your coffee routine.

Coffee farmers and producers around the world have been getting more and more experimental with their beans in recent years. By adapting processes similar to winemaking, such as yeast inoculation and anaerobic fermentation, they’re able to coax exciting new flavors from their coffee, and the Wilder Blend is a prime example. Néstor Neffer Lasso Zuñiga farms in Pitalito, Huila, in Colombia and creates yeast-inoculated fermentations to emphasize specific characteristics, such as an amplified fruit-forward sweetness. He blends his beans with a washed Ethiopian heirloom from Mustefa Abakeno in Jimma, who aims for clarity and structure.

The resulting blend is explosive with fruity aromatics, reminiscent of grape soda and gummy candy. Roasted on the lighter side, the coffee is exceptionally bright without being astringent, and the fruitiness carries through with flavors of pineapple and guava, with a delightfully smooth finish. While I am typically a milk-and-sugar coffee drinker, the Wilder Blend is best enjoyed solo, and would also make for an exceptional iced coffee. $28/ 12-oz., vervecoffee.com