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For a lot of us Norteamericanos, Señor “Juan Valdez”, the mustachioed caricature who stood for Colombian coffee (“he” is actually still around, amazingly, apparently doing a good job for the country) told a good quality story. Today's Colombia still produces more Arabica coffee than anywhere else but the vast majority is “normal”; clean, bright and light-bodied, and frankly not so exciting. For a few years now we've been excited to work with Direct Trade partner Traviesa (based in Manizales) to acquire really fantastic microlots from small farmers, many of whom push the edge of the envelope in varietal selection and processing.
One such “outlier” is Carlos Arturo Adolphs Garcia, who owns Finca La Suiza in Alto La Paz, Chinchina, Caldas Department. Sitting at nearly 1500 meters, Don Carlos's 11-hectare farmstead features mostly exotic (AND hard-to-grow AND low-yielding!) varietals among his 32,000 coffee shrubs: Gesha, Wush Wush, Tabi, Pink Bourbon and lastly (and least, less than 5%) Caturra, which is among the most commonly-produced coffee crops in the country. We chose to roast his natural process (whole cherry raised-bed sun-dried) Wush Wush varietal, which has ancestral Ethiopian provenance and is extremely rare in Colombia. It is a fabulously complex coffee, showing notes of cherry,berry, jasmine and brown sugar. Heavy body and a long, sweet finish in the recommended pourover and drip method. Very often only Ethiopian natural process coffees offer this kind of sensory palette, so we're thrilled to share this coffee and encourage Don Carlos to keep raising the bar even higher. Light roast for best expression of the fruit and body in pourover and drip.
