Located in the village of EL Voladero in Cauca's Jambaló municipality, lives the producer Aracely Vitoncó Martinez and her family on their farm, Finca El Cedro. Aracely was born into a coffee producing family and learned most of what she knows from her parents. When she first met her husband, they began living together and decided to start growing coffee. Soon after, they began having issues with Roya and decided to introduce a population of Castillo trees into their farm. Today, they have a healthy farm of 10,000 trees spanning 2 hectares, and a family of 4 children.
As for the harvest and processing techniques, Aracely adheres to her following practices:
Fully ripe cherries are picked every 18 days during harvest and promptly depulped on the same day. Once depulped, they are dry fermented in-tank for 13 hours before being washed 4 times. Once clean, the coffee is moved to parabolic dryers for an average time of 15 days until it reaches a stable and desirable moisture content.
Aracely takes great oversight in ensuring that her pickers harvest only the ripest cherries and believes that the true success of processing lies in the drying process and maintaining healthy airflow.
The Regional Select Program was created to highlight the unique profiles we have found that are inherent to specific microregions within Colombia. The regions we are focusing on are Huila, Nariño, Cauca and Tolima. The primary difference between the Microlot Program and Regional Select is the preshipment cupping score.
This program adds yet another tier to our stratified buying structure in Colombia, designed to further reward quality. As the coffees are received at origin, they are separated based on quality and local areas.
The separations look like this:
Regional Select: 86–87 pts
Microlot Program: 87–89 pts
90 Points Program: 90+ pts
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.
