Colombia
Finca El Nido - Colombia
250g
*Cup of Antioquia 1st place youth cat.*
QUALITY SCORE: 87.50
Cup Notes
Bergamot / Earl grey tea / Caramel
Suggested for espresso and filter
when we roast
We freshly roast to order all coffees on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (excluding national holidays), and ship the same day! Cut-off time is 11:59pm (UTC+1) of the day before the roast day. *We only ship whole beans*
Details
- Quality Score
- 87.50
- Producer
- Daniel Hernandez
- Country
- Colombia
- Terroir
- Antioquia
- Altitude
- 2000 mt
- Process
- Washed (wet)
- Arabica cultivar
- Caturra Chirozo
- Picked in
- January 2018
- Arrived in
- October 2018
- Shipped in
- Box + Vacuum pack
- Roast profile by
- Rubens Gardelli
- Roasted on
- Customised solid-drum roaster
THE STORY BEHIND
Besides studying 3 days a week in distant Medellin, 26-year old Daniel Hernandez has been working extremely hard in the past 4 years to improve the quality of his family’s farm, El Nido. Urrao, a 3,5hr drive from Medellin in one of the more remote regions of Antioquia, won fame a few years ago when, the now world famous in Colombia, Doña Carmen won the Cup of excellence with a lot of Caturro Chirozo.
The quality of Daniel’s coffee was first picked up by coffee Expert Andres Ruiz, of the educational institute El Sena. Andres runs his own specialty coffee bar in Medellin and has been serving small batches of finca el Nido for 2 years already. He mentored Daniel to improve the quality even more and increase consistency. He convinced Daniel to compete in the regional contest ‘Taza de Antioquia’ one of the most professionally organised regional contests in Colombia. The contest is held almost every year and judges and buyers from all continents are invite to select the best coffees from this gigantic coffee department. Over 800 coffees were entered in the contest. During this edition there were judges from the US, Europe and Korea. Two cuppers of our Colombian partner TMO helped decide the final 25 winners. Finca El Nido came in second but was the favourite of our team from the start. Because of Daniel’s age he was the winner of the ‘young coffee farmer’ competition. But to us he was the winner overall.
THE VARIETY
Caturra Chirozo is a natural mutation of the Caturra variety, unique to this village of 17401 inhabitants. This coffee has a subtle profile with sweet notes of Bergamot, a flavour not common in the Colombian Caturra variety. The prizewinning lot we bought of finca El Nido, is also of this famous Caturra Chirozo and has an intense fragrance and flavour of Bergamot, the coffee resembles an Earl Grey tea.
Caturra coffee varietal was developed by the Alcides Carvalho Coffee Center of the IAC, Instituto Agronomico of the Sao Paulo State in Brazil.
In 1937, IAC received seed samples of genetic materials originated on the border of the states of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo. It was from Red Caturra and yellow Caturra cultivars. These two cultivars originated by natural mutation of Bourbon Red, originally a tall coffee shrub, found in the Serra do Caparaó , which is now a mountainous National Park north east of the city of Rio de Janeiro.
These are the main agronomic characteristics of the Red and Yellow Caturra varietals:
1. It is the of small size, of reduced length of internodes, leaves and side branches, providing compact appearance to the coffee shrub.
2. This is the first naturally occurred coffee mutation found, with small size and high yield capacity
3. They have excellent quality in the cup because they have virtually 100% of the Bourbon coffee in their genetic makeup.
4. the conditions in which they were planted in Brazil to cultivate Caturra showed low hardiness and consequent lack of vigor after a few harvests, which led to the premature depletion in yield.
THE FERMENTATION PROCESS
Washed 72hrs dry fermentation. Dried 10 days in parabolic drier and 15hrs in gas drier.
Washed coffees focus solely on the bean. They let you taste you what’s on the inside, not the outside. Washed coffees depend almost 100% on the bean having absorbed enough natural sugars and nutrients during its growing cycle. This means the varietal, soil, weather, ripeness, fermentation, washing, and drying are absolutely key.
Washed coffees reflect both the science of growing the perfect coffee bean and the fact that farmers are an integral part of crafting the taste of a coffee bean. When looking at washed coffees, it becomes apparent that the country of origin and environmental conditions play a vital role in adding to the flavour.
During wet processing, the pulp (i.e.the exocarp and a part of the mesocarp) is removed mechanically. The remaining mesocarp, called mucilage, sticks to the parchment and is also removed before drying. During this process, the sugars present in the mucilage are removed through natural fermentation or mechanical scrubbing. Mucilage is insoluble in water and clings to parchment too strongly to be removed by simple washing. Mucilage can be removed by fermentation followed by washing or by strong friction in machines called mucilage removers. Fermentation can be done by stacking the coffee outside or placing them under water and allowing nature to take its course. After the sugars are removed, the beans then can be taken through a secondary washing to remove any additional debris, or taken immediately to the beds for drying.
