Colombia Santa Barbara

• Country: Colombia
• Region: Santa Rosa, Risaralda
• Variety:  Caturra
• Processing:  24h Aerobic Fermentation – washed and dried on raised beds
• Altitude: 1730 - 2000 MASL

The roaster's story:

Don Cesar is a new partner with whom we started working from last harvest season onwards. Finca Santa Barbara is located in the town of Santa Rosa, with 16 ha and 185,000 trees at its disposal for coffee production. The farm was purchased in the 80s and has spent the past 5 years trying to differentiate their coffee from the rest. From the start they used the best practices in cultivation (cycling tree varieties), recollection, fermentation and drying to achieve the best cupping quality. As a result of these thorough practices and the great potential of the Finca, he is one of our favourite producers in the region and our safe bet going into the future.

The Finca has implemented selective recollection. Cherries are picked on consecutive days to ensure that only appropriately ripe cherries are collected. This labour intensive process allows for a coffee that is more homogeneous in aspect as well as in the cup. Cherries are picked during daylight hours before they are allowed to gather together in a collection basin by the end of the day, where they are immersed and allowed to rest in cold water at night. The next day, the cherries are de-pulped and inserted in barrels to allow for fermentation to occur for 14 hours. Finally, the cherries are washed and spread out to dry. Drying is done in the sunlight on large patios for 7 to 15 days, with a retractable roof protecting the cherries during night. Drying is a combination of: 50% drying phase in sunlight for 5 days enhanced by 50% of mechanical drying using coffee husk without exceeding 45°Celsius. The coffee is then separated by weekly lots for threshing.