Are you feeling saucy? We’ve got you covered with Ecuador El Sauce.

To be clear, this technically should be pronounced sauce-eh (or something like that, we’re coffee roasters, not phonetic spellers), and in Spanish, “el sauce” translates to willow tree. It’s also the name of a town in Southern Ecuador, the source of this delicious coffee.

This is our third year roasting El Sauce, and while it is technically a washed coffee, it presents almost like a natural. That’s largely thanks to the details on that process. Several of the farmers who contribute to this blend are employing yeast-inoculated fermentations, using yeast to both alter and control the fermentation step that breaks down the coffee’s fruit in the traditional washed process. This drastically changes the flavor profile of the coffee, creating a much fruitier-than-normal cup.

Over the past few years, we’ve tasted more and more yeast fermentations, and these can range from overwhelming to more subtle. But Capamaco Trading in Ecuador and the Coffee Quest (the importer for this coffee) blend coffees from several farmers in El Sauce, to balance the intensity. We had the pleasure of visiting El Sauce this past harvest with Roberto from Capamaco, and the farmers who do employ yeast seem to do so in a balanced way, and several of the farmers employ a more traditional washed process, without added yeast. The mixed result balances the tangy fruit of the inoculated coffees to create a profile that - in our opinion at least - is fruit-forward without being overwhelming.

Red grape, molasses, and berry muffin make for some interesting sauce, that until recently, we really didn’t expect out of Ecuador.