This Nordic Christmas Coffee from the Swedish roastery Gringo Nordic offers a modern take on a Christmas blend, featuring lightness and pronounced fruitiness instead of a heavy winter profile. This blend combines three distinctive coffees from Kenya, Colombia, and Ethiopia, which together deliver subtle fruitiness, sweetness, and a lively character. The Kenyan component adds notes of grapefruit, raspberries, and red currants; the Colombian component evokes blackberries, citrus candies, and wild berries; and the Ethiopian coffee brings bergamot, strawberry jam, and vanilla.
Each of the three components of the blend has a slightly different story behind it. Kenya Karimikui AA comes from the Kirinyaga region, where approximately 2, 591 smallholder farmers, members of the Rung’eto Farmers Cooperative Society, deliver their freshly harvested coffee cherries to the Karimikui station. The Colombian Las Moras is a regional lot from family farms in the Acevedo and Pitalito areas of Huila. The Ethiopian component comes from Kayon Mountain Farm in the Shakiso area of East Guji, which has been owned and managed by Ismael Hassen Aredo and his family since 2012. The farm spans roughly 500 hectares, of which about 300 are planted with coffee, and employs 25 permanent and around 300 seasonal workers. Ismael operates his own nursery here, utilizes the shade provided by acacia and other native trees, and also supports the local community.
The blend’s diversity is further enhanced by three distinct processing methods. The Kenyan Karimikui AA, made from the SL28 and SL34 varieties, undergoes a double-washed process—after hulling, it ferments for approximately 12–24 hours, is then washed, soaked for another 24 hours, and slowly dried on raised beds. The Colombian Las Moras, made from the Castillo, Caturra, and Colombia varieties, first undergoes aerobic fermentation followed by anaerobic fermentation, after which it is processed using the Thermal Shock method, which involves rapidly alternating between cold and hot water. The Ethiopian Kayon Mountain, made from local heirloom varieties, is processed using the natural method and dried on raised beds. It is precisely the combination of these three approaches that gives the final coffee its complexity, fruitiness, and lively character.