Dulce Misterio, or Sweet Mystery, is a farm owned by Mauricio Duque based in Neira, a town in the Department of Caldas. Previously we've bought one other coffee from Duque, a pink bourbon which blew us all away. This coffee is also really stunning, and due to being comprised of less prestigious varietals, is a bit more affordable. Duque's focus with his coffee growing at Dulce Misterio is Pink Bourbon, Geisha, and Chilli Bourbon (sometimes referred to as pimiento bourbon or candy striped bourbon), but he's also started producing a blended lot of varietals --Colombia, Tabi and Caturra-- and processing them as a natural. The results are delicious, and we'll be sure to buy more in the future. Sadly this time we only managed to snag a couple of bags, but we're excited to share them with you! We're getting raspberry, champagne and sweet rhubarb... clean, juicy, and effervescent... a really really good coffee at a very good price point.
Before buying his farm, Mauricio Duque worked as a coffee exporter. The company was quite sizable but went out of business due to the pandemic. With more time on his hands and some start up capital, Mauricio decided to pursue his lifelong dream of producing the best possible Colombian coffee. He decided to look for a perfect place to grow coffee. He did a lot of research, focused on elevation and soil composition, scoped out available land/farms that were for sale and tested lots of soil samples. The other thing he did was look at where coffee competition winners were from to narrow down if there were subregions that produced a lot of competition-winning coffee. In the end, he found two farms that he thought had near-perfect growing conditions and settled on the one that was within an hour of his home in Neira. He named it Dulce Misterio because for some reason everything that grew there had unusually high sugar content, not just the coffee but other fruits and vegetables too. He says that particular mountain has very unique soil characteristics, where every single crop has sweeter than usual attributes... this can also be confirmed when measuring Brix Degrees in oranges, sugar cane and other fruits grown there. A sweet mystery indeed!
We bought this coffee from Falcon, one of our main importers. It comes from Siruma, who own a dry mill and are also an exporter in the region. The lines of communication are great with both, and we're really exited about starting to work more directly with Siruma who can help us plan our buying ahead-- for example, perhaps next year we can get a larger quantity of Mauricio Duque's Natural blend since we know we love it!
For those interested in processing here are the processing notes on the coffee:
PROCESSING:
1) The coffee is picked only at its optimum ripeness. For this, he has a set of growers that work with him year-round. These growers are trained on picking and they have a fixed amount paid, regardless of how much or how little coffee they pick in a day's work. This ensures pickers don't have pressure or a need to pick large amounts of coffee where unripe cherries would probably be present.
2) The coffee is hand sorted; under and over ripes are set aside and processed separately.
3) The coffee is floated/washed to get rid of unwanted materials and poor-quality beans, and to have cleaner coffee for the rest of the process.
4) The cherries are moved to closed plastic tanks where a 48-hour cherry fermentation takes place. The tanks are filled with 70kg of cherries and have special valves so excessive gas pressure can be released.
5) The coffee cherries are moved to a parabolic solar dryer for 24-48 hours for an initial dehydration, then moved to a Guardiola (rotating mechanical dryer) until target moisture is reached. In the Guardiola the maximum temperature is 42C°.
6) The dry cherries are stored in grainpro bags for 15 days to stabilize the coffee before selling it to Siruma so they can mill the coffee to then export it.
Elevation: 1850 - 2040 meters above sea level
Varietal: Colombia, Tabi, Caturra
Cup Score: 88.75
Price paid per kilo: £12.20 per kg
