Alexander Cortés, his wife Ofelia, his daughter Korin, and an extended family of his sister, mother, and father, live together on their farm, Finca Buena Vista, nestled in hills of Tambo, near the municipality of Sevilla in the Cauca region. The farm is planted with 6 hectares of Castillo and Caturra coffee (30,000 trees); 3 hectares of land are reserved for natural forest growth. After finishing school, Alexander starting working on his father's farm, and soon began studying agricultural management along with coffee production courses at SENA, a technical coffee school in Pitalito, Huila. The methods practiced throughout the production of this lot are as follows:
A harvest only full-ripe cherries and immediate pulping on the same day of harvest. The coffee was then left to a dry-fermentation for a duration of 14-15 hours, washed 5 times, then moved to a paroblic dryer where it spent 12 days finding a stable level of moisture. It was then sacked and stacked on wooden pallets to settle before being sent to the mill 12 days later.
This coffee is part of the “Million Pesos” program we have in Colombia for coffee that cups above 90 points.
A Million pesos per carga (125Kilos of pergamino) which is almost double what is being paid at traditional purchasing points. We have been doing this for about a year and producers are ecstatic when they make the grade as the price at the market is barely above the cost of production. We are excited to find coffees that cup above 90 points, so it is a real winner for both sides and something we can repeat.
We think that the terroir or soil, sun weather, and placement on the planet contribute largely to the flavor of these coffees, when they are picked ripe and handled properly. These coffees are selected by cup and then blended, like a Rhone wine or a local honey that comes many fields in a 4-mile radius.
For more information about coffee production in Colombia, visit our Colombia origin page.
