Hipolito Vincente Enrique has been farming coffee since he was 12 years old—nearly 60 years. He started by helping his father on their family farm, and bought his own land after working on several different farms as he grew older. He has developed his own techniques and procedures for creating quality coffee from the training sessions he's attended through the years, as well as from speaking with and learning from other producers. While his grown children live in the city, they visit Hipolito regularly and help when they can; he also has hired a family of caretakers to assist him with the day-to-day management, especially during the harvest.
Finca Mirador is a 6-hectare farm, with 5 hectares planted in Castillo coffee. Hipolito picks the coffee when it ripens to a deep purple color, then depulps the coffee using a manual depulper and sorts it using azaranda, a kind of screen that removes unsuitable beans. The coffee is fermented dry for 18–20 hours, then washed three or four times before being dried either in the sun, in parabolic dryers, or in mechanical dryers.
For more information about coffee production in Colombia, visit our Colombia Origin Page.
