Nespresso has launched a limited-edition aged coffee for its machines.
Made from fresh Arabica coffee sourced from high in the Colombian mountains and plains, the Selection Vintage 2014 coffees were harvested three years ago and then aged in much the same way as whisky, fine cheese or cured meats.
The new product will be available for the brand’s OriginalLine and Vertuo coffee machines. Though the coffee in each range uses the same aged coffee beans, their flavour profiles differ slightly due to the unique brewing technologies and roasting subtleties, Nespresso said.
The OriginalLine coffee has ‘a complex taste, elegant woodiness and a smooth velvet-like texture’, while the Vertuo coffee boasts ‘a distinctive strong character, intriguing dry woody notes, and aromas of toasted bread’.
Their development continues a 300-year-old tradition of ageing coffee, which dates back to the days when coffee harvested in Southeast Asia would spend months on board a ship while it was transported back to consumers in Europe. The coffee beans would swell in the wet sea air and dry in the sun, altering the taste of the final coffee, Nespresso said.
Karsten Ranitzsch, its head of coffee, said: “With the launch of Selection Vintage 2014, we wanted to introduce an entirely new flavour with unique qualities. To do this, we took a concept that is well-known in the food and drink industry and applied it to coffee. To age the coffee, we needed to start with beans of an exceptional quality and then store them in very specialised conditions that we regulated constantly. Any miniscule change in the moisture, temperature, time, atmospheric pressure, light and oxygen conditions would affect the final taste. This carefully tailored process has resulted in an outstanding coffee with a very distinct flavour profile.”
Both the OriginalLine and Vertuo coffees have an intensity of seven on Nespresso’s intensity scale, which ranges from one to 12.
Available now, a sleeve of ten single-serve capsules of the OriginalLine Selection Vintage 2014 is priced at $8 and a sleeve of ten single-serve capsules of the Vertuo Selection Vintage 2014 is priced at $12. That works out at $0.80 and $1.20 per cup.
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