La Esperanza 2017 - Colombia 2017 Verified listing

Region: Palestina, Huila

Score: 86.78

Variety: Caturra, Colombia y Castillo

Process: Washed

Altitude: 1,900 - 2,000 m.a.s.l

Rafael has been in coffee for 40 years, he was born and raised in coffee. He works together with his wife and son always taking responsibility for the daily labors. He explains that the process of the coffee begins with the careful picking from the trees and then the cherries are taken to the tanks in order to discard the floating cherries. Afterwards, they pass the coffee through the pulper machine and then to the fermentation tanks. The fermentation process takes 36 hours and then the coffee is fully washed before taking it to the drying beds.

After the coffee crisis, the economic situation and the market price were not favorable so he decided to look for new options and alternatives to improve his incomes. This lead him to produce specialty coffees and now receive an aggregated value for it.

The transition from producing commercial coffee to specialty coffee  has been a good change; besides the economic benefit, he has learned a lot of new things in this process. The time that he’s been working with specialty coffees, he has learned many things and he want to continue this learning process. Rafael says that he doesn’t want to stay in this point of the learning process, he wants to learn more and change more things in his farm.