We have met Anderson several times during our travels with LaREB in Colombia.

Anderson Castrillón

Anderson Castrillón is someone the LaREB collective have been familiar with for some time. In fact, we have often met Anderson on our travels in Colombia together with LaREB, first in November 2019. This is the first time we have been able to purchase coffee he has grown however. Anderson grows coffee just outside the town of La Celia, in the Risaralda region, not far from the coffee growing centres of Pereira, Manizales and Armenia. La Celia has been a major focus for LaREB in recent years; it’s a relatively short drive from their base in Pereira, coffee growing is a major industry in the area, and they have a strong network there through Ana Mustafá and her family, who own several farms in the hills surrounding the town centre. La Celia, however, is under served by speciality buyers, meaning that many farmers deliver their coffee to local purchasing centres to be blended in to regional blends, or even sell unprocessed cherry to be processed at large central mills.

An anoxic fermentation leads to a soft and ripe cup profile, with sweet notes of cherry and a complex and juicy character.

LA CELIA

Anderson is an excellent example of the core values of LaREB, producing delicious coffees with intention, and using these to start conversations between roasters like us, and the producers themselves. Through this, they are able to have real impact on communities and individuals in the coffee growing regions of Colombia. As LaREB are still a fairly small scale operation, the small area around La Celia is one of their primary focusses, and this shows in the excellent coffees they’ve been presenting over the past few harvest seasons. Their genuine and personal approach is also clear here, their values aligned so clearly with Anderson that he is now employed at the Pereira base as the QC lead for all of LaREB.