Finca Vista Hermosa is a 3-hectare farm of which 2 hectares are planted with about 8,000 Castillo variety coffee trees. The coffee is picked ripe (when the cherries are purple) and depuled the same afternoon they are picked. The beans are fermented dry in tanks for 18 hours before being washed three times and placed in parabolic dryers for 10 days.Farm owner Ciro Camayo says that experimentation and collaboration has led him to extend the fermentation time of the coffee from 12 to 18 hours, which makes it easier to wash the mucilage off the beans, and to make the overall cup profile sweeter.
Señor Camayo was raised in a farming family, but the product they focused on was fique, a natural plant material that is used in making jute bags. In around 2007, he decided to start growing coffee as well, starting out with 1,000 trees and finding enough success that he and his wife were inspired to take a risk in planing 7,000 more.
For more information about coffee production in Colombia, visit our Colombia Origin Page.
