This lot from Ivan Molano is exemplary of both balance and sweetness. It has a beautiful, soft, chocolate mouthfeel, rounded out with red fruit and a satisfying subtle acidity.
Caturra
Planadas, Tolima
2,070 masl
July, 2019
Hand picked at peak ripeness. Floated. Depulped. Dry fermented for 24 hours. Dried on raised beds until moisture content reaches 10.5%.
This is our fourth year working with Ivan Molano. Ivan is a true coffee producer; his family has been producing coffee for many generations—longer than any of them can remember. Ivan inherited his 11 hectare (~27 acres) farm from his father, and has dedicated himself to maximizing quality. He believes doing so is the best way to make a living for his family, and also best for the future of coffee production for his children. His farm, Las Pulgas, rests at the top of the mountains in Planadas. It enjoys warm days and cold nights, which is perfect for slow and even cherry maturation. We are very happy to continue working with this beautiful coffee from this dedicated family.
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.