Colombia | Huila, Honey

Origin: Colombia

Region: Huila

Farm: Los Nogales,  Los Naranjos & Mi Fortuna  

Farmers: Oscar Hernandez, Teodolfo Lopez & Jairo Hoyos

Taste notes - marmalade, raisins, chocolate, spiced rum, yuzu.

This coffee is a blend of three distinct Caturra lots, each grown and processed by a different farmer in the Huila region. The goal for this blend was to achieve a deeply complex cup profile. The result turned into a cup with mild citrus acidity that lingers, through velvety sweetness, that ends with a shot of booziness in aftertaste. 

Huila Region

Nestled between the Eastern and Central mountain ranges, the Huila region of Colombia is an idyllic haven for coffee cultivation. The region's daily temperatures gently swing between 13 and 22 degrees Celsius, and coffee trees flourish at elevations ranging from 1,200 to 1,800 meters above sea level. The soil is enriched by the Nevado del Huila volcano, which has packed it with volcanic minerals, providing essential nutrients and water drainage for the coffee plants. The Huila region is also a biodiversity hotspot, with landscapes ranging from high-altitude páramos to lush tropical rainforests. This diversity supports a rich array of plant and animal species. The Magdalena River, Colombia's main waterway, begins its journey here, providing crucial irrigation and water resources for agriculture and daily life. Beyond coffee, Huila's fertile lands yield rice, corn, sugarcane, and various fruits while also supporting cattle ranching and dairy farming. The region's infrastructure is well-developed, with major highways and an expanding road network that facilitates the transport of goods, including coffee, to markets within Colombia and beyond. 

Farmers

This lot consists of three different Caturra lots, each grown by its own farmer with a unique story. 

Oscar Hernandez

The most well-known of them is Oscar Hernandez, whose coffee lots from Los Nogales farm have won many championships around the globe. Los Nogales was bought in 1953 by his grandfather, Ricardo, who then passed the farm to his son Ricaurte Hernandez, Oscar's father. Ricaurte became the first Colombian Cup of Excellence winner in 2005, putting the family legacy and Los Nogales name in the spotlight. In 2013, Oscar became the head of Los Nogales overnight when his father was killed resisting thieves from a guerrilla organization that wanted to steal his coffee crops. Oscar left his marine career and took over the care of Los Nogales and his family. In these 11 years of hard work, he and his family have achieved amazing results by upholding his father's legacy and producing outstanding coffee lots. Los Nogales is now a full-blown family company. The two main faces of Los Nogales are Oscar, who acts as the CEO of the farm, and his sister Angie, who operates and oversees microbiology and all the processing. Other family members are also fully involved in various operations like quality control, accounting, the wet mill, harvesting, and more. Within Los Nogales, Oscar produces coffee ranging from well-executed washed lots to complex and outstanding fermented ones.

Teodolfo Lopez 

Teodolfo Lopez grew up in the Cauca region and was taught about agriculture at a very young age by his parents. By age 8, he already knew the full production process of cacao. While growing up, guerrilla activity roamed through Colombia and recruited young people to join their unofficial and criminal military forces. Guerrillas came with the most beautiful women, offering guns and power, but Teo's parents always ran away and insisted to their children that they should follow a path without violence in their lives. When Teodolfo grew up and had his own family, he moved to Huila, which was a more peaceful region at that time. There, he slowly acquired his own land and started to grow coffee as his main income to provide for his family. Our partners in Colombia met Teo when they discovered that the cooperative working with him was stealing from farmers by cutting their share per kilogram. Teo connected with them, and their collaboration began, securing him a fixed price no matter the quality he delivered. This highly motivated Teo, and with new knowledge, he shifted his traditional farming and processing methods to more quality-driven and sustainable practices, even adding some new processing styles to enhance his coffees.

Jairo Hoyos 

Jairo inherited his own coffee farm from his uncle because Jairo was the one who always helped him out. Jairo is a farmer who doesn't use any pesticides on his farm, as he has worked in construction and seen what chemicals in that industry do to people and the land. For that reason, all his coffees are fully organic, even though he is not seeking certification. Jairo's farm is located relatively low for Colombia (~1450m), which makes coffee production challenging due to the specific climate, bugs, and different coffee plant diseases that are more common in lower areas. Like Teo, he was shown new ways and offered a deal with our Colombian partners that guaranteed him a fixed price per kilogram regardless of quality. This also motivated him to increase quality through different fermentations. He had a so-called “eureka moment” when he learned about processing methods. Jairo saw all the coffee juice left from fermentation and realized that all the flavor of his coffee was probably in it, so he began applying alternative processing methods to his coffee lots. 

Processing 

As mentioned before, this coffee lot is a masterpiece of collaboration between three farmers—Oscar Hernandez, Teodolfo Lopez, and Jairo Hoyos. Each farmer handpicks their Caturra cherries when they have reached the perfect ripeness for harvesting. Then, all cherries are placed in open tanks to oxidize and kickstart aerobic fermentations, which begin to enrich the coffee's taste profile to the sweet and boozy side. After 72-84 hours, the cherries are removed from the tanks and pulped, leaving a lot of mucilage on the beans. After that, the beans are placed in fermentation tanks where they undergo anaerobic fermentation for 36 hours to further enrich the coffee cup profile. After fermentation, the beans are removed from the tanks and slightly washed so that part of the mucilage remains on them, allowing the coffee to be dried using the honey method. The beans are dried in the sun for around 15-20 days. During this time, they are constantly stirred every 8 hours to ensure even drying and consistency throughout the entire coffee lot. Finally, the blend is delivered to our partner's facility, hulled and packed in 35 kg bags with GrainPro liners inside for safe transportation to Europe.