Origin: Huila, Colombia

Producer: Luz Dary Polo

Process: Washed

Varieties: Pink Bourbon

Altitude: 1640masl

Importer: Shared Source

Roast: Light

Notes: Guava, Dried Apricot, Lilac, Honey, Tangerine

We're beyond excited to be offering a fresh coffee from Luz Dary, and buying coffee from her for a second year running! We hope in the future to continue buying from partners like Luz and support growing producers, as we grow too! 

This coffee is absolutely beautiful, offering big tropical fruit notes, with a lively acidity, and big sweetness. This coffee is so incredibly expressive, and we think a big part of that is the detail in processing that Luz Dary puts into her coffee.

Process:

Luz Dary starts with ripe cherries, and floats them in water to remove the under- and over-ripe cherries. From there, she carefully stores the cherries in a sealed Grain Pro bags, and they begin their fermentation process within the cherry.

After 40 hours of this initial “cherry-ferment”, she de-pulps the coffee, and leaves it to ferment in a sealed pickle barrel for a low-oxygen environment fermentation - up to 60 additional hours of fermentation after the initial cherry ferment.

From there, she washes just once and takes the coffee to dry. During peak harvest seasons, she pays a significantly higher price to pickers, which allows her to ask that they only pick ripe cherries.

About Luz Dary & Los Guácharos 

44-year old Luz Dary works on her 3 hectare farm in the township of Villa Fátima, outside of Bruselas, Huila. There she has 4,000 caturra trees and 1,000 pink bourbon trees, on her 3 hectare farm, and she recently renovated 7,000 variedad Colombia trees, replacing the older trees with the “bourbon ají” varietal.

Luz Dary is a member of the “ Los Guácharos association “ - a small group of independent coffee farmers that share technical know-how, and collectively commercialize their coffee to sell at higher volumes.

They are a quality focus’d group of producers in Southern Huila, where they’re currently working towards converting to fully organice agriculture, making their own fertilizers, fungicides, and building elaborate water filter systems to minimize water waste during proceesing.

Luz makes her own fertilizer she calls Super Magro, made of organic minerals, waste products, molasses, bone ash, and manure fermented with microorganisms collected from virgin soils, and it’s used as a fertilizer and a protectant from diseases. Very much like some very fancy Natural Wine producers following old ways.

Why Pink Bourbon?

Pink Bourbon is super cool, it's a natural mutation between Red and Yellow Bourbon, but also has a genetic tie to the Colombian varietal Catimor, which is impart derived from Robusta, giving it higher yield, and stronger resistance to coffee leaf rust and other ailments.

When done right Pink Bourbon offers flavours akin to Southern Huila (Sweet citrus & Dark Chocolate) and classic Ethiopians ( Tropical, Floral, big sweetness). Those high quality flavours combined with the potential benefit of natural resistance is huge for coffee farmers, especially ones who wish to pursue more organic processing methods!

With the combination of this unique varietal, and Luz Dary's meticulous processing, it's a match made in heaven! Giving us a super unique look at both the varietal and the region of Huila. Thanks Luz!