Tasting Notes: Red Stonefruit, Caramel Toffee, Crisp
Nelson is a member of the Los Guacharos Association, a small, independent,
quality-focused producer group in Bruselas, Southern Huila (close to Pitalito). This group as a whole has been working to improve their surrounding ecology and agriculture in the past several years. He represents some big changes in the world of Colombian coffee, and Nelson himself has shouldered much of this responsibility. He and his siblings have taken over half of the family farm to follow in the footsteps of their parents' legacy. There, they maintain about 20,000 trees of differing varieties including Caturra, Catimor, Castillo, veridad Colombia, San Bernardo, and even Pink Bourbon.
This particular lot is a mixture of two lots, one being 100% Caturra and the other a mix of Castillo and Colombian varieties. Nelson's processing is nothing short of meticulous. He takes freshly picked, ripe cherries and puts them in a wooden tank for 24-36 hours. Then the coffee cherries are de-pulped put into ceramic-lined tanks and left to ferment for about 48 hours. From there, the coffee is fully washed and left out to dry on raised beds shaded by cloth for the next several days. Once the coffee has reached a "sweet spot" in the drying process the parchment is then sealed in GrainPro bags to maintain a perfect moisture content of 10.5% until dry milling and export.
All this hard work from Nelson and his crew really shows up in the cup on this particular coffee. Heavy stonefruits dominate the cup up front leading into a nearly perfectly caramelized body with a crisp finish like dried cherry or pink lady apple.
Like all coffees purchased by our friends at Shared Source, this was purchased directly from the producer(s), that being Nelson and his family. This means that the Shared Source team directly deposits money into the farmer's Colombian bank accounts immediately upon pick-up or delivery of the dried parchment to the designated dry mill. If the farmer doesn't have a bank account, cash or checks are used, whatever is easier and makes the most sense for each producer. This is about as "direct trade" as it gets!
The coffees out of Huila have been truly exceptional in the last couple of harvests. Get them while you can!
