As many of you know Chloe and I got married a few months back! We brought our trailer to serve our friends and family at our wedding, and we needed to find a great coffee to impress our guests…This is the one!

When we reached out to our closest exporting partners in Colombia, we said we are looking for a very special coffee to brew on our trailer for our wedding day, as well as some coffees to help launch our wholesale operation that will be happening VERY soon!

For our wedding coffee, we sampled some of the nicest luxury lots you could find in Colombia. From Yellow Tip Geishas to near 89 point SL28’s between $25-35+/Ib in un-roasted green (that’s about 16x more than what many roasters purchase for their blends!). We also received samples of other amazing coffees like other Geishas, Rum Barrel aged coffees, green apple co-ferments, and other new and interesting varieties.

After many rounds of tasting without knowing which coffee was which until I looked below the cupping bowl, I was shocked to see one coffee stand out that competed with another that was over 500% its price!

The natural SL28 produced by Felipe Arcila was my absolute favorite on the table, but Chloe’s was this coffee (which was shockingly my 2nd favorite).

Here is a note Connor sent to his monthly Pit Stop Crew subscribers a few months ago when we sent this coffee out to them:

“This morning I brewed a cup of this coffee 17 days off roast and I got this wonderful grape candy aroma when very hot. The volatiles quickly faded and turned into a vibrant and clean passionfruit-like acidity with a Panela or brown sugar sweetness. This more rich/developed type of sweetness is an extremely common trait for coffees produced in Colombia!

The coffee has a creamy note to it with a sparkling acidic pop! You could say this resembles slightly-tart strawberries, especially only after a few days off roast due to the carbon dioxide flavor effects.

This is such a stunning and sweet coffee!”

About The Importer & Coffee:

Cofinet purchases a lot of this coffee each year and has two different offerings called Gaitania and El Indio. Gaitania is a fully washed process of 100% Caturra variety typically ranging 84+ points. El Indio, which is this coffee, is the naturally processed version of this same bean..

Caturra originated in Minas Gerais, Brazil as a natural mutation of the incredible Red Bourbon variety in our current Rwanda Legacy Bourbon release. It also produces a higher yield and is more resistant to local diseases.

I really love when washed coffees can be fermented through the natural fermentation process and receive a higher cup quality score and in return, be sold for a higher price and (often) profit, all while consuming less resources. This is a great example of this coffee and surely, the cup quality alone will showcase just how great a expertly controlled, naturally processed coffee can be from Tolima, Colombia.

About the Variety:

El Indio is a Community Lot + Micro Lot project in Tolima, Colombia consisting purely of the Caturra variety. Caturra is a natural mutation of one of our favorite varieties, Red Bourbon.

Caturra was found on a coffee plantation in Brazil around 1915-1918. It has a single gene mutation that causes the plant to grow smaller, which breeders were incredibly interested in so their plants could be grown closer together.

Caturra was estimated to consist of about half of Colombia's coffee production until the government-sponsored program in 2008 began to distribute Castillo for its disease-resistant capabilities. It has been incredibly influential to shape the Latin American coffee scene. So of course, a good amount of Caturra still grows all around Colombia today.

The flavor of Caturra is known to be pretty mild. It’s a classic crowd-pleaser that is known for its sweet notes, clean medium acidity, and medium body. It’s the epitome of that solid cup of coffee that has delicious yet subtle notes, with good sweetness and nice body that anyone, even the most experienced of coffee professionals, tend to admire.

Of course, through naturally processed fermentation, such as this one, the flavors, textures, and aromatics are more extreme. In this coffees case, its clean processing flavors heighten the overall cup score significantly without tasting at all overly fermented.

This is surely one solid, and absolutely memorable (see what I did there?!) coffee!