Santuario, Risaralda, Colombia

Flowers of Coffee

Why is it special?

This lot comes from Don Cesar Augusto Echeverry, a Colombian coffee industry leader and 4th-generation coffee grower. The Coffee Quality Institute honored him for coffee leadership at SCA Boston in 2019. He is a former president of Colombia's national agricultural research institutes (ICA, CORPOICA), and a former president of Colombia's National Coffee Growers Committee and the National Federation of Coffee Growers' Board of Directors.

His coffee is grown at Finca Atenas in Santuario, Risaralda, at 1,550 masl in premontane wet forest bordering Tatamá National Park, on volcanic soils 73 km from Nevado del Ruiz. The daily swing between hot sun and cold night winds (15 to 25°C) builds sugar and acidity in the cherry, which is what specialty buyers look for. It is shade-grown under an agroforestry canopy of 5,000 trees per hectare, then goes through a double anaerobic fermentation (up to 48 hours) and 15 days of solar drying as a honey process. Finally, it is cold-milled and hand-sorted for a clean cup.

CupPING NOTES