Monteblanco, Colombia

An award winning passionfruit-fermented Caturra from Finca Monteblanco, Huila — roasted for filter.

Rodrigo Sanchez Valencia grew up on Finca Monteblanco. His grandfather started farming coffee here, his father continued it, and Rodrigo has spent his time on the farm pushing the boundaries of what's possible with processing. This coffee is the result of that.

Finca Monteblanco sits at 1,730m in Acevedo, Huila, one of Colombia's most celebrated coffee-growing regions, fed by the Suaza river and sitting on the edge of Cueva de los Guacharos, one of Colombia's 59 protected national parks. The altitude, the water, the microclimate: everything here points toward quality.

Rodrigo selected purple Caturra for this lot, a distinct strain with higher Brix sugar content than standard Red Caturra, meaning more natural sweetness before processing even begins.

Before the cherry is picked, Rodrigo prepares a fermentation mixture of ten different yeasts — lactobacillus, saccharomyces and cerevisiae bacteria — combined with passionfruit, cholupa (a sour Colombian fruit traditionally used to make lemonade), and a sugar-rich feed of molasses, panela or granulated sugar. This mixture is sealed and fermented for eight days.

Once cherry is harvested and pulped, the coffee is added directly into that fermented fruit mixture and left for a further 180 hours, seven and a half days. The passionfruit and cholupa don't just flavour the fermentation environment: they become part of the coffee's flavour structure.

After fermentation, parchment is washed clean and laid on parabolic drying beds, raked regularly for even drying over 20 to 25 days.

The result is one of the most distinct coffees we've stocked. You'll know immediately that something different happened here.

More about this coffee

Tasting notes: Passionfruit, mango, chocolate orange
Process: Extended Fermentation, Fully Washed
Producer: Rodrigo Sanchez Valencia
Location: Monteblanco, Huila
Elevation: 1730 masl
Variety: Purple Caturra