The Dagoberto’s family is conformed by Luisa Fernanda, his wife; his daughter Victoria who’s just 3 years old and his son Cristian with 9 years old. Dagoberto and Luisa Fernanda are 38 years old, a young coffee growing family. They’ve lived in different places before settling down in La Esmeralda as coffee growers.
La Esmeralda is a 100% caturra lot (2.000 coffee trees). The particularity with this lot is its age: these trees are 7 years old, which is rare in Colombia because the renovation is around 5 years. Basically, because after 5 years productivity lowers and trees are too tall and make the picking more difficult. However, Dagoberto has decided to leave those caturra over their 5 years because the production was decent and the current prices are pretty good.
This make sense as older trees with good root development and low production tends to be more complex in the cup than young coffee trees. Dagoberto is going to prune the trees in January 2023 though, due to low productivity, tall trees and lack nutrition (Dagoberto didn’t fertilize in 2022 because of the scheduled pruning) as you can see the pictures attached.
He thinks good nutrition is the key, but also plants shade and fruit trees into the plantation providing several nutrients, while giving diversity at the soil and flavours to the cup.
Another part of the process relevant is the picking. When the weather allows it us, they let the cherries to overripe on the tree. This can be hard in Colombia because of the inconsistent climate - a pouring rain could cause the falling out of all cherries, resulting in big losses. Once he has picked the cherries, he depulps them immediately to carry on fermenting for 24 hours, then washing it with fresh water one time and done.
The drying process takes around 12 to 20 days, depend on weather.
Sadly, as mentioned before, Dagoberto will prune the Caturra coffee trees, so we’ll have waiting 2 long years to get this coffee again. However, we’ll cup the pink bourbon soon to assess its quality and hopefully have other great coffees.
This 44 Kg lot was presented to me while it was still in parchment at the farm, where it had been harvested between May and August. As soon as I validated it, it was prepared and sent via DHL. A month ago it was still at the farm !
And now it's available to you for you papillas to enjoy ! A true Competition lot and a washed one, which is getting rare these last years...
