Caturra variety, washed process
Roasted for filter brewing

Summer berries, marmalade, and old-fashioned cola

This coffee comes to us from a small, single-producer farm called La Esmeralda, located in the Huila region of Colombia. The farm is owned and run by Norbey Quimbayo, alongside his wife and two children.

It was in 2010 that Norbey made the transition away from conventional coffee production to focus on ‘specialty’ coffee, planting out a range of more exotic varieties of coffee tree including pink bourbon, gesha, and papayo. Alongside the planting of new varieties, Norbey underwent training at Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje — an agricultural education institution — to learn more about growing and processing coffee to a higher quality standard. According to our import partners, the changes for Norbey, his family, and La Esmeralda have been very welcome, allowing him to fetch higher, more sustainable prices for the coffee he produces.

La Esmeralda has increased in size over the years and now covers around twelve hectares of land. Of this, around five hectares are used for growing coffee, while the balance is used for growing plantains, mandarins, and limes.

While Norbey now grows a range of coffee varieties on the farm, this particular selection is caturra — a variety we tend to gravitate towards on the tasting tables for its clarity and sweetness. Discovered in Brazil around 1915, caturra is a natural mutation of the bourbon variety and has gone on to represent a large percentage of the coffee trees growing in South and Central America.

For us, this coffee is great Colombian caturra — ripe, juicy, and plump, tasting of fresh summer berries, orange marmalade, lime zest, and old fashioned cola.

This is the first time we’ve purchased from La Esmeralda, and have done so through import partners, Cofinet.