Potosí Natural

This lot of the San Juan varietal is grown on the original Granja farm, Finca Potosí. The team at Potosí and Las Margaritas, just outside the town of Caicedonia in northern Valle, are constant innovators, even creating their own hybrid varietals through manual cross pollination of trees. San Juan is an example of this, a cross between Granja’s Bourbon and Pacamara plant stock. In the mountains above Caicedonia, traditional natural processing is very difficult to control due to high average humidity of over 70%, and frequent rains during harvest. For this process, CGLE have used a very long in-cherry fermentation of around 50 hours in open temperature-controlled tanks. After the fermentation, the cherries are transferred to drying silos for a slow and controlled mechanical drying, making a full natural process possible in this humid and damp climate. Their meticulous production process has resulted in a coffee that creates a balance between primary terroir flavours, and secondary process-driven flavours.

In this cup, this means fresh and bright acidity from the high altitude Cauca Valley terroir, combined with soft ripe fruit and a heavy rich sweetness, like we’d expect from a great natural.

Natural Sudan Rume

This is the seventh year we have purchased Sudan Rume grown on Cafe Granja La Esperanza’s Las Margaritas farm. Always stunning us with its strong varietal characteristics, we once again look forward to the distinctive Sudan Rume aromatic character. The Sudan Rume varietal has been lauded for its cup quality in recent years, partly down to competition success, but it hasn’t always been so. The Sudan Rume varietal originates from modern day South Sudan, in what is now the Boma National Park. The park lies just across the border from Ethiopia, inside the small area where Arabica coffee still grows completely wild. Sudan Rume, or RS-510 as it is officially designated, is indeed an heirloom or ‘wild’ varietal, mainly used as a stock of high quality genes for new hybrid varietals. There are very few commercial plantations of pure Sudan Rume due to its low yields and susceptibility to disease, but Granja have planted a 4.8 hectare plot on Las Margaritas, and it has consistently produced outstanding results.

Natural Cerro Azul

This is the ninth year we have purchased Cerro Azul, the coffee that our baristas Sonja Zweidick, Dane Oliver and most recently Victor Kristensen have taken to the world stage, in both Barista and Brewer’s competitions. Cafe Granja are intimately familiar with the care and attention the Geisha plant needs, they were one of the first to bring it to Colombia, having previously owned a farm in Panama, the adopted home of this lauded varietal. This translates into their excellent work at the farm level, this coffee is a true representation of the potential of the Geisha varietal in Colombia. Clean acidity, intense and distinct flavours, and some of the most incredible aromatics we have come across in coffee. Cerro Azul was chosen by the experts at Granja as a perfect location for the development of ultra high quality Geisha cherries. The location of the farm is further southwest in the Cauca Valley than Potosí and Las Margaritas, closer to the state capital of Cali, and to Colombia’s Pacific coast. The cool breeze from the Pacific combined with the very high altitude mean that the trees have to fight low average temperatures and large day-night swings in temperatures to survive, concentrating energy into their cherries as sugar. This leads to a high level of both sweetness and intensity of flavour in the final cup.