Coffee of The Day: Gourmet Beans From Bali, Indonesia’s Treasure Island

My Coffee of The Day is from the Indonesian island of Bali. Bali is in addition to being home to hundreds of Buddhist temples, stunning terraced rice fields and the most beautiful scenario of serene nature ALSO is home to about 4 percent of the total Indonesian coffee production in an average harvest year. This blend is from the “Princip!” gourmet line by Danish supermarket chain Føtex which often has surprised SpillingTheBeans by bringing truly unique, rare and little known origins to the market. The Princip! series is based much on the principles of the boutique wine industry where these select coffees are based on seasonality and only are offered when a sufficient high quality from one harvest is available. This fully-washed Bali blend is no exemption, offering a delicate flavor and an incredible smooth coffee, with a mild acidity yet well rounded body.

Indoensia is more famous for the “Kopi Luwak” beans which famously — or infamously — is processed through the Asian civet’s digestive system. But tourists travelling to the island of Bali and signing up for the island coffee tour more often than not come back and report to Spilling The Beans that while the Luwak coffee was an interesting experience, they liked the traditional Bali Arabica beans far better.

Unlike most of Indonesia’s other and more famous coffee regions like Java and Sumatra, coffee growing in Bali wasn’t established by the Dutch but was introduced to local traders from Lombok who brought the first coffee seedlings to Bali in the beginning of the 20th century. After trading coffee for over 300 years they believed the rich volcanic soil and the climate in the North-Eastern Balinese region of Kintamani, where the climate quickly proved ideal for coffee growing and small scale production rapidly spread.

“A wet-processed Bali coffee is so much brighter and high-toned than other coffees from the region; it’s hard to compare them. It definitely has the fruit flavors found in Java, Timor and Flores coffees, but bears little resemblance to Sulawesi or Sumatra coffees (except for the rare wet-process coffees from those origins).” –Rodney Glick, Coffee Master at Seniman Coffee Studio in the Bali town of Ubud.

The Kintamani region is still Bali’s primary coffee growing region and even though this region primarily grows the Robusta species of coffee, Arabica is becoming more and more common as the milder flavor has become popular with the local tourism industry. The coffee in Bali is grown mostly by small holder producers on tiny family plots.

For more on coffee in Bali, we recommend checking out Bali-based blogger Stefan Russel’s page here: http://www.vilondo.com/bali-travel-guide/coffee-in-bali-all-you-need-to-know/