All for one, and one for all!
Felipe is originally from the Tolima region of Colombia and is his family’s 1st generation of coffee growers alongside his brother.
His first contact with the industry was when he was 16. Felipe shadowed his brother in visiting coffee producers around the region—he worked with a coffee exporter. A few years later, he left to study Agro-Industrial Engineering in Cauca while his brother bought some land in Antioquia, where he planned to start his own production. When Felipe finished his degree, he decided to join the family business.
The area of Urrao, where the estate is located, is very special for the production of specialty coffee. It is a valley at 1950 MASL, with a very stable temperature of 19 degrees Celsius that makes the cherries develop slower and denser than in other areas. Surprisingly though, Urrao is not famous as a coffee-producing region: its main activity is the production of avocado.
For Felipe and his brother, kickstarting the coffee production felt extremely difficult. The main reason? They tried to grow 80,000 coffee plants completely organic and from scratch, later losing 80% of those initial trees. Today, however, things look a bit better, and they have 25,000 coffee trees—50% currently organically grown and slowly transitioning to a fully organic coffee plantation.
GEISHA VARIETAL
Felipe explains that the seedlings for this Geisha plantation were given to him by his friends Carlos Belalcázar, from La Bohemia, and Abdias Muñoz of El Porvenir in Nariño, who were respectively placed 1st and 2nd in the 2022 Cup of Excellence.
WASHED PROCESS
Daily cherry collections are fermented in bags for 24 hours as whole cherry, then pulped and left to dry ferment in tanks. This process is repeated for 5 daily cherry pickings. The accumulated coffee is then washed clean on the 6th day and commingle fermented on the 7th day. Finally, the coffee is left to dry on parabolic raised beds to control temperature and humidity to export requirements. According to the buyers, Condesa Co Lab, this process contributed to highlighting the Pink Bourbon variety’s red fruits and floral characteristics.
