This extremely small Caturra nano lot placed fourth in this year’s Acevedo Cup. In the cup we find a complex red tea structure, star fruit-like acidity, and a very round fudge-like sweetness.
Caturra
La Marimba, Acevedo, Huila
1,800 masl
Main; January, 2021
Hand picked at peak ripeness. Floated to further remove defects and depulped on the day of harvest. Fermented for 12 hours in cherry, and an additional 60 hours in water in parchment. Dried on raised beds for 30 days.
Gustavo is a dedicated first generation coffee producer who started his farm, Buenos Aires, in 2002. Gustavo has participated in the Acevedo Cup for a number of years, and almost always places in the top 10. This is our first year selecting Gustavo’s coffee. His farm rests at some of the highest elevations in Acevedo—a region already known for its particularly cold microclimate—which greatly lengthens the time of cherry maturation and contributes to the development of sugars and acidities in the cup. Gustavo is one of the most environmentally conscious producers we've ever met, and his dedication to the Earth can, at times, seem almost spiritual. This conviction is a driving force in how he produces and processes his coffee, and is evident in the overall cup profile.
Caturra is a natural mutation of the Bourbon variety. It was discovered on a plantation in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil sometime between 1915 and 1918. Today, it is one of the most economically important coffees in Central America, to the extent that it is often used as a benchmark against which new cultivars are tested. In Colombia, Caturra was thought to represent nearly half of the country’s production before a government-sponsored program beginning in 2008 incentivized renovation of over three billion coffee trees with the leaf rust resistant Castillo variety (which has Caturra parentage).
The cost of getting a coffee from cherry to beverage varies enormously depending on its place of origin and the location of its consumption. The inclusion of price transparency is a starting point to inform broader conversation around the true costs of production and the sustainability of specialty coffee as a whole.