In June, Maksim and I flew to Neiva and drove south for five hours into the mountains of Huila. It was our second visit. The first was in October 2024, and this time we came for the main harvest.
From a café in Melbourne
In 2017 I learnt latte art from a colleague in Melbourne called Camila Rojas. Her family grows coffee near Pitalito. Years later, when we were planning the shop, I sent her a message asking whether her uncle sold his coffee to small roasters. He did not, yet. Camila's family introduced us to two neighbours, and that is how we came to buy from three farms.
The families
Finca La Esperanza is six hectares of Caturra and Pink Bourbon, run by Camila's uncle Don Hernando Rojas and his daughter Yuli. Finca El Mirador belongs to Doña Esperanza Muñoz. Finca Los Naranjos is run by the Calderón brothers. All three farms are under ten hectares, on slopes steep enough that pickers keep one hand on a branch for balance.
We tried picking on the first morning. We lasted forty minutes and picked about a fifth of what Yuli managed in the same time.
The wet mill at 5:00
Picked cherries come down the hill in the afternoon. Before dawn the next day they are sorted by hand, pulped, and left in tiled tanks to ferment for around 36 hours in the cool mountain air. Don Hernando checks the beans by rubbing a handful between his fingers and listening for a gravelly sound. He has done it for forty years. This step decides more of the flavour in your cup than anything we do in the roaster.
How the price works
Each family told us what it costs them to grow and process a pound of coffee, including labour, fertiliser and the new drying beds. We agreed 4.40 US dollars a pound of green coffee for all three farms, up from 4.10 last year. We fixed it before the harvest, so a fall in the world market cannot take it away. That is about 8.30 euros a kilo before shipping. We print it on every bag.
We would rather pay a price we can keep paying than a high one we cannot.
The coffee is drying now. It will travel by sea to Rotterdam and should reach our back room in September or October. Follow the harvest here. It goes on the subscription in October, and we will tell you the day the sacks arrive.
Inés, behind the bar
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