Colombia Cup of Excellence -Pradera Esperanza

Sweet Maria's Coffee

Fierce competition in the very first Cup of Excellence Auction for Colombia - but I was not going to lose this precious lot of coffee. The cup was more complex, deep, big on the palate, than any other lot on the table. For a coffee from the Huila district, it reminded me more of the big, expansive, deep ripe cup profiles of Popayan coffees I used to find. As a judge at the Competition, this coffee jumped out at me in every phase of the cuppings, and in the finals I rated it higher than the top three coffees. The farm is in La Pradera, near Tarqui. It is a micro farm, just 2.5 Hecatres. I was not able to visit there, but this is the background from the Colombian Coffee Federation: "Abel Bermeo is a single, 39 year old coffee grower. He lives with his parents (Alicia and Alvaro), he has 10 brothers and he is the youngest. He studied until 5 year of elementary school. 25 years ago, he started working with coffee crops. Currently, he has 3 lots. The names of the lots are: La Esperanza [ the winning farm], El Mirador, and Buenos Aires. He fertilizes three times per year with 1.4 kg per hectare. He makes a cultural control of insects; he doesn’t use pesticides or herbicides." Yes folks, that's where your coffee comes from, and with the premium we paid for this lot, Abel gets about 85% of the sale cost, which would be at least 7x what he usually gets. CoE really awards the winning farms in a very direct way. I enjoyed the light roasts of this coffee, with an amlost custard and caramel (Flan!) sweetness to them, but it was the Full City roasts that captured the depth of the cup. Fragrance and aromatics are deeply fruited, and have a dark nuttiness to them. In the cup, there is chocolate and almond, a undertone of plum which came off in some cups more like blackberry, and a oily body. (Almond oil was a descriptor I wrote several times on the cupping form). But it was the overall impression of the cup, of this broad, fat, expansive cup profile, something I wanted to hold in my mouth, circulate, think about, that was more important to me than any single flavor attribute. For this, a +1 cuppers correction, and the hope you enjoy this cup as much as I do. Play with the roasting, because the lighter roasted Coty+ cup, while not as deep, has a different range of character to it, but give this Full City a whirl around your palate too.

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