The mysterious lot we purchased

Fast forward three years and the plants were ready for a small harvest. They were definitely different from Gustavo’s Colombia and Castillo plants, and yielded far less. Sceptical of his daughter’s stories of wealth and fame, Gustavo quietly harvested and processed the coffee from this small plot and decided to try to find out what he really had. He enlisted the help of his friend, who was a member of a local cooperative in the town. Gustavo would sell his coffee to the cooperative through his friend in an attempt to find out its true value. He knew he had something rather special when two coffee buyers from La Cabra turned up in La Celia in search of the source of this lot. Gustavo’s friend in the cooperative was Moises Caijica, and this small lot from his unknown varietal became La Cantina. We visited the cooperative in La Celia in November 2019, in an attempt to find out more about the mysterious lot we purchased from LaREB last summer. With the help of Ana’s cousin Faully, who lives in town and operates a beautiful coffee farm/roastery/cafe, we found out that the coffee had not been produced by Moises, but by his friend Gustavo. Once we left Colombia, Herbert and Ana of LaREB were able to establish contact with Gustavo, Daisy and Freddy, and find out a few more details about their farm. They are still not sure of the exact origins of the varietal, but have agreed to work more closely with LaREB to investigate this, and to work on picking and processing to add value to their crop and create more consistency in the cup.

In the long term, with help from LaREB, we are confident that Gustavo and his family will be able to grow some truly stellar coffee, and for now we are happy to see incremental improvements in quality and consistency through better systems on the farm. This is a fully washed lot from Gustavo’s unknown varietal lot, with an aromatic lemon verbena character followed by a juicy balance between tangerine acidity and honey sweetness.

About La Cabra

A focus on raw material

If we don’t feel that a coffee suits our style or what we like to present, we simply won’t buy it. Sometimes this leads to issues in green buying; we have to pay very close attention, to a level of green quality that will support this approach, and to how this will develop over the life of a coffee. We are required to focus heavily on the freshness of coffee, both green and roasted, to avoid introducing taints into our cups. We always use clean and fresh water, of an ideal mineral content to present the coffee in its best possible light. Once we have the correct roasting profile, water, and coffee age, the act of brewing is much more simple. A wide variance in brewing parameters can still produce delicious and transparent cups. It is also important to note that this is not always the most consistent approach. The coffee is laid completely bare, so any flaw with the raw material is clearly on show. We could often develop some coffees slightly more, to make them more approachable or easy to work with, but wavering from our philosophy like this would compromise our commitment to complete transparency in coffee.