With notes of chocolate and orange, this coffee is the perfect option for a café that wants to serve an exceptional house coffee that won’t scare anyone by being too wild but will still have loads of complexity in the cup. Traditional, but with a twist.
One amazing thing about buying coffee from Colombia is that you can pretty much buy fresh crop coffee all year round if you know when to buy from which region. This time of year is perfect for buying coffee from Southern Huila-- the fresh harvest coffees are just coming in and tasting great. This particular lot was one of the best examples of a classic washed Colombian we’ve tasted in a while, so we were really excited to purchase quite a lot of it and hopefully start a relationship where we buy from the same place year after year!
Guarapas is a blend of smaller lots from farmers working in the municipalities Pitalito, Palestina, and Oporapa. In Pitalito there is a dry mill that receives tons of parchment daily through the harvest season. After coffees are analysed and cupped in the laboratory, quality lots of the higher scoring coffees are combined to form bigger lots like this. The farmers that own the smaller lots are paid a premium for the higher quality lots that go into this regional blend.
South Huila is a super fertile region sitting on the doorstep of a UNESCO Biosphere reserve, the Colombian Massif, which is a beautiful mountainous region. It is the starting point of many of Colombia’s rivers and holds about 70% of the country's total fresh water. Guarapas is a river that forms in the Colombian Massif and has its basin between Palestina and Pitalito. It is an extremely important source of water for both municipalities and their communities.
Elevation: 1400 - 1600 meters above sea level
Varietal: Colombia, Castillo, Caturra
Cup Score: 85
Price paid per kilo: £6.50 per kg
Process: Washed
