We have added another green coffee importer to our partners – The Coffee Quest. The first coffee from them is La Victoria, a great regional blend that is very important to the local community.
The farm / washing station:
This coffee comes from the foothills of the Nevado del Huila volcano and is grown, harvested and processed by the La Victoria cooperative. The fifty members of the La Victoria cooperative have been producing high quality coffee for generations, but for decades it has been cut off from the rest of Colombia due to the presence of guerrillas in the region and the difficulty of accessing the area via narrow, unpaved access roads. In late 2016, Andrés Perdomo, president and representative of the La Victoria association in Santa Maria, rang the doorbell of Coffee Quest’s office in Medellín, carrying a huge bag of more than 25 coffee samples. He had spent 18 hours on an overnight bus to meet them in person. When Coffee Quest cupped the samples a few days later, they were in wonder: the quality was exceptionally high, with most of them receiving an 86+ rating. These were farmers who were simply doing what they had been doing for ages, but could only sell their coffee to local buyers at market price or at a value that was far below the true value of their coffee. As such, they were never really focused on specialty coffee. But after cupping coffees in the 84 to 88 point range, Coffee Quest was enthusiastic about the prospects for future harvests. Coffee Quest fell so well with this group that it leased a warehouse for the 2018 harvest, set up a lab, and hired a taster to taste every single sample delivered to the buying station. Several of the association’s youngest members completed an internship at the buying station, where they learned to cup and sort green coffee.
So much work and tasting goes into approving each farmer’s coffee to be included in this batch! At Coffee Quest, they always ask the farmers to bring samples for review first to ensure not only the quality of the cup, but also that the coffee meets their strict physical requirements (proper moisture content and water activity are two examples). Once the sample is approved, they ask the farmer to bring all the coffee to the warehouse, where they take a sample from each bag and re-evaluate it to make sure that the quality of the whole batch matches that of the sample.
Variety:
Bourbon is the most famous of the varieties originating from the Bourbon family. It is a tall variety characterised by its relatively low production, susceptibility to the most common diseases and excellent cup quality. French missionaries brought this variety from Yemen to the island of Bourbon (now Réunion) in the early 17th century, giving it its present name. Bourbon did not leave the island until the mid-19th century. From the mid-19th century, however, the variety spread to new parts of the world as missionaries sought to establish themselves in Africa and America. Around 1860, Bourbon was imported to Brazil, from where it quickly spread north to other parts of South and Central America, where it is still grown today. Here it has mixed with other related varieties imported from India and with Ethiopian native varieties. Today, there are many Bourbon-like varieties in East Africa, but none of them exactly resembles the Bourbon variety found in Latin America. In Latin America, it has now largely been replaced by varieties derived from it (notably Caturra, Catuai and Mundo Novo).
Caturra is a natural mutation of the Bourbon variety. It was discovered on a plantation in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil sometime between 1915 and 1918. Caturra has a mutation in one gene that causes the plant to grow smaller (called dwarf/compact). After the discovery of Caturra, selection was carried out at the Instituto Agronomico (IAC) in Brazil from 1937. The breeders were interested in the small size of the variety, which allows the plants to be placed closer together, and in its closely spaced secondary branches, which allow more fruit to be produced in the same space. For decades it was one of the most economically important coffees in Central America, so much so that it was often used (and sometimes still is) as a ‘benchmark’ against which new varieties are tested. The only disadvantage of this variety is that it is susceptible to disease, especially coffee leaf rust. It is similar to Bourbon in sweetness, balanced and slightly citrusy.
Together with Bourbon, Typica is genetically one of the most important and indigenous varieties originating in southwestern Ethiopia. Sometime in the 15th or 16th century it was transported with Bourbon to Yemen. Unlike Bourbon, which did not leave Bourbon Island (Reunion) until the mid-19th century, Typica had a more difficult journey. At the end of the 17th century and during the 18th century, it moved from Yemen to India, then to Java and finally to Holland, from which it was spread to Central America. Typica is a tall plant with very low production, susceptibility to disease and good cup quality. Because of these factors, it was gradually replaced in most American countries It is still widely grown in Peru, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, where it is called Jamaica Blue Mountain.
Processing:
This coffee is fully washed. The first step was floating (sorting out the bad beans with water), then pulping and following fermentation in a water tank for 24 hours. The beans were then washed and spread on concrete surfaces where they dried for approximately 20 days.
Our baristas notes:
You can look forward to a full-bodied, juicy espresso with a slightly stronger acidity. The best recipe for us was 1 : 2.24 with a time of just over 30s. The espresso has a citric-phosphoric acidity similar to candied orange. On the body you will find a nice balanced sweetness typical of dried mango and a taste of almonds and chocolate in the finish. We have not made any changes to the milk in the recipe and the coffee is light in it. In the milk you will find notes of caramel, nuts and chocolate.
