Pangalengan, located in Bandung Regency, West Java, is a fairly high plain with much cooler temperatures than the coastal area of Jakarta, Indonesia's capital. As such this area has always been a get-away destination of sorts for those looking to escape the heat of one of the largest metropolises in the world for the weekend. This area turned out to be a center for plantations and producers of quality arabica
coffee.
Long overshadowed by the island to the north, Sumatra, which produces the vast majority of Indonesia's coffee crop, West Java, and Pangalengan in particular, have only recently begun to come into their own as a single origin for coffee. As recently as 2015 West Java coffee could only be marketed by being shipped to the main coffee port of Medan and blended with Sumatra coffee to be sold to the biggest coffee importers each requesting dozens of containers in a single harvest season. It is a pity because the world was missing out this entire time.
Sunda Kopi, a processing team headed by Agus and Insan Sani located in the Pangalengan region of West Java, is our go-to source for quality wet hulled coffee. This year they surprised us by producing a small lot of washed coffee also. This mixed varietal lot stood out from all the other washed samples we cupped this season. It made perfect sense for us to procure this lot in a year of down production in Indonesia. Here is a microlot that is great example of what Indonesia, and the island of Java specifically, can produce when it comes to washed coffees.
