Origin: Colombia
Farm: El Recinto
Varietal: Castillo Rosario
Altitude: 1800 MASL
Certification: Micro-Lot
Process: 360hr Extended Fermentation Washed
Cup Score: 87
Fresh Lemongrass, Green Grape & Milk Chocolate
The longest fermentation duration we’ve ever showcased.
Remember Alfredo’s name - as an up and coming producer whose name is yet to be celebrated, this lot illustrates fantastic value for a coffee of such quality.
‘A really interesting profile; fruit forward with pronounced tropical sweetness without the boozy / fermenty overtones you’d expect from an extended ferm like this’
Producer
Meet Los Castaño. Between Alfredo, his brother Eunilver, and his son Daniel, the Castaño family own 3 adjacent farms, one of which has its own processing facilities. They collaborate to add value to their coffees, each contributing according to their specialism. Eunilver’s focus is on production, while Alfredo is a certified level 2 CQI Q Processor. Dani has been learning to grow, ferment, roast, cup & brew coffee since the age of 9!
Farm
Alfredo’s parents named their farm El Recinto, meaning “enclosure”. The family farm is fairly small, at 27 acres. 21 acres of the property are segregated, kept wild, in an effort to curb deforestation and preserve the region’s natural resources, flora and fauna as well as preserving the property’s water sources. On the remaining 6 acres of land dedicated to agriculture, he has around 10700 coffee trees at any given point. Most of the trees are Castillo Rosario as well as some small plots planted with Supremo, Sudan Rume and Gesha. This was built slowly from just a plot of land, while contending with the civil war, as the upper bounds of the farm where the dense forests are held great strategic importance for the guerrillas, effectively forming logistics corridors to support their operations.
A combination of a particularly cruel winter combined with low parchment price caused serious problems for the smallholders of Santuario. Rural protests forced the government to grant a subsidy to farmers for every ‘carga’ sold (1 carga equals 125kg of coffee in parchment. It’s a common standardised measure that comes from the amount of coffee that a donkey could transport from farm to town, in the days before Jeeps). Unfortunately, due to widely acknowledged systemic corruption these often failed to reach the very families it was intended to help.
These circumstances prompted the brothers and a number of other local families to take matters into their own hands and founded the Asocafe Tatama, local Association of Coffee Producers of high quality coffees with the aim of collaborating for mutual benefit, in order to provide added value to their coffees and improve the standard of living of the participating families. Since its founding in 2012 the association has grown to encompass 95 families.
The newfound possibilities of manipulating the flavour profile of coffee lit the fire of curiosity in Daniel, Alfredo and Eunilver, who embarked on their journey to expand their knowledge and skills, equipped with a new perspective, which would have been unimaginable to the community until that point.
Varietal
This coffee is a regional distinction of Castillo. In 1968 Café de Colombia’s research centre Cenicafé, which is dedicated to studying and improving coffee farming, began a genetic improvement programme to create rust-resistant varieties. After 23 years of research and development Castillo was released for production in 2005. 12 years later, it is still resistant to both leaf rust and coffee berry disease.
Processing
Firstly the coffee is picked and put in a floating tank where all defective coffee, unwanted leaves and wood sticks are removed. The berries are selected by removing green, semi ripe and over ripe berries.
Next the whole berries are put in a container and left for 24 hours to ferment. After 24 hours has passed, they are pulped and put in hermetic sealed containers and fermented with the mucilage for about 170 to 200 hours - depending on weather conditions.
The coffee is then washed and put on drying beds for up to 8 days, again depending on the weather conditions, until it gets to about 10.5 % moisture content.
When this is achieved, the coffee is packed in grain pro bags and left on the farm to stabilise for a few days. Finally it is delivered to the Asocafé Tatama warehouses where roasting and cupping takes place for quality control.
The coffee is then washed and put on drying beds for up to 8 days, again depending on the weather conditions, until it gets to about 10.5 % moisture content.
When this is achieved, the coffee is packed in grain pro bags and left on the farm to stabilise for a few days. Finally it is delivered to the Asocafé Tatama warehouses where roasting and cupping takes place for quality control.