DAK – Berry Swirl 200g | Bolivia

Some coffees earn their place in a shipment through months of planning. Berry Swirl earned its place through a shipping container running short on volume.

When the boat carrying DAK's coffees was preparing to leave, Daniela at Los Rodriguez in Bolivia offered up this small lot to help fill out the container. It very nearly didn't make the trip at all. "You will like it very much, a very unique and exotic coffee!" she told the team, and she wasn't exaggerating.

What makes Berry Swirl unusual is the varietal makeup. SL-28, SL-34 and Batian are varieties most associated with Kenyan coffee, prized there for their vivid, fruit-forward cups, yet here they are grown at 1500 MASL on the Los Rodriguez farm in Bolivia, a country better known for classic Bourbon and Typica-descended lots. The cherries are naturally processed: picked ripe and dried whole in their fruit, rather than pulped and washed before drying. Left this way, the sugars and acids in the cherry skin have time to work their way into the bean, building fruit-forward complexity as the coffee dries down.

The combination of a Kenyan-variety blend and full natural processing gives Berry Swirl a cup that leans closer to an Ethiopian natural than a typical Bolivian filter coffee: forest fruits, berry jam and sloe plum layered through the cup, with the kind of jammy sweetness natural process coffees are known for. We would suggest a pour-over, V60 or similar, to let those fruit notes separate out clearly, though it holds up well across most brew methods.

For anyone used to the classic washed, floral cups Bolivia is best known for, Berry Swirl is worth trying as a contrast. It is a reminder that a country's usual reputation does not have to define every lot that comes out of it, especially once an unusual variety and process both enter the picture.

Freshly roasted by DAK Coffee Roasters in Amsterdam and imported to the UK by ROAST EDIT Co.