Monteblanco

Coffee grower Rodrigo Sanchez has spent half his life in specialty coffee. Like many farmers in the past, he would work the soil and process his green coffee, without a proper understanding of what buyers wanted. That all changed in 2002 when he took advantage of a local opportunity for sons of farmers to learn to cup coffees. From then on Rodrigo, along with his father and grandfather, started to pick farming techniques with a view towards improving cup profile.

As with all truly excellent specialty coffee operations, consistent quality became a central theme at the farm. Rodrigo noticed that many farms would manage to win cupping competitions one year, and never again to succeed despite continuing the same practices. When Rodrigo looked closely at these farms he found that many of them produced several distinct varietals beyond the five major ones generally found across small-scale coffee operations in Colombia. This marked the beginning of his endeavours to separate Pink Bourbon lots from the rest of his production.

Looking at the history of the region, Rodrigo and his grandfather concluded that there had been a few incidents in the past, which led to diversification in coffee varietals. One of these was when his grandfather bought new seedlings in the early 1980’s during a coffee leaf-rust (fungus) outbreak, to replace a portion of the farm’s trees. The likely origin of these seeds was an experimental farm that operated in the 1950’s-1960’s with over 500 varieties. Having isolated the so-called Pink Bourbon varietal on the family farm, Rodrigo proceeded to plant three out of the 18 hectares with it.