You haven’t heard from me in a while, but believe me - we’ve been working tirelessly on finding great coffees for all our customers. Our goal for 2011 was to develop relationships and find coffees that can offer a new perspective on the origins we work with. We’ve visited a lot of beautiful places where coffee is growing and made a lot of new connections.
The second half of November, I visited Colombia and our sourcing partner Virmax again. It was our second visit to Colombia in five months, and it was exciting to see people and places again and catch up on how their work was going.
The trip started up north near Santander to visit El Roble - an organic farm I fell in love with earlier this year, not only because it is a beautiful farm but it’s also very well run. That afternoon I got to see the cherry picked during the day being delivered to the mill for processing. They do a very serious effort in making their pickers perform in picking only ripe cherry, and I learned this wasn’t only giving good results in the cup, but what they received at the mill was mainly red cherry. Also the drying part of their processing was interesting to see - they were still early in the harvest, but to make room for all the coffee they will be drying they’re using three story high raised beds - a great idea for many other farms. Found some nice coffee here, and our El Roble lot will arrive in our warehouse sometime late in January 2012.
From North to South, Colombia’s coffee growing areas are around the three mountain ranges (Cordilleras) of the Andes. These mountains provide unique micro climates - creating a diverse range of flavor profiles. We have been working with the Los Cauchos producer group in San Augustin, Huila for about 12 months now using their La Serrania for decaf and Los Idolos for both our regular drip line and decaf. In addition to these old friends, we met with several producer groups from all over the southern part of Huila - El Desarrollo from Gigante, Palmar de Criollo from Pitalito and El Paraiso from Tarqui. One lot from the producers of Palmar de Criollo coming to Vancouver as well as a few micro lots from individual farms - we are excited to share these beautiful coffees with all of you sometime early in 2012!
Oh. And merry Christmas!
-Mie