Colombia

Natural Caturra

Raisins, plum, white chocolate

This coffee was grown by Luz Helena Salazar at the farm Maracay. 

Luz Helena grew up in Armenia and has been producing coffee for the last 20 years. She owns Maracay, an 8-hectare farm located at 1450 m.a.s.l, in Armenia Quindio. Luz is Carlos and Felipe’s mother, the co-founders of Cofinet and wife of Jairo Arcila.

Luz's passion for coffee was inspired by her husband's work on coffee farms and as a dry mill manager. Luz would hear Jairo talking about coffee and wanted to be more involved in the industry. With the support of Jairo, Luz started learning how to care for coffee plants and what steps she needed to take to produce high-quality, ripe cherries. Luz found dealing with insects very challenging at the start and would draw on Jairo's knowledge to help with this.

For several years now, her focus has been on producing Specialty Coffee. With the support of Cofinet, Luz has been able to improve farm practices and focus on producing the best cherries she can. Once ripe, the cherries are then processed by Cofinet at their processing station, La Pradera.

This lot was exposed to a dry aerobic fermentation of 30 hours and then placed onto raised beds until 20% moisture content was achieved. The coffee was then placed inside Grainpro bags for 80 hours. At this stage, fermentation is driven by natural yeast. The coffee was then placed back onto the raised beds until ideal moisture is achieved. 

This process was later called the « white wine fermentation » due to the flavor profile and acidity that it gives to the coffee.