West Timor Coffee
It is quite unusual to find a Timor Island coffee being offered especially one as good as this. The Island has been politically divided in two parts for centuries. The Portuguese settled in the east of the island, (Timur is Malay for East) at the end of the 16th Century. The Dutch settled in the mid-17th Century and based themselves in Kupang, in the West, this side of the island was called Dutch Timor right up until 1949 when it became Indonesian Timor. The Portuguese and the Dutch fought for control of the whole island up until it was divided by treaty in 1859.
Timor coffee is unusual in that it comes from an interspecific hybrid of Coffea canephora var, Robusta and Coffea arabica that occurred naturally on this island in the mid 1940’s. We suspect that this coffee may well be grown either close to the East Timor border or even across the border and then shipped to West Timor to be sold onto the international market.
This ‘Indonesian type’ coffee is unquestionably one of our favourite kinds; strong, with full body, a fantastic aroma, not particularly bitter but definitely a characteristically ‘Italian espresso style’ flavour. Would work well with a cafetiere or in an espresso.
