Colombia – Sandra Jurado (3rd Place Acevedo Cup)

Region: Acevedo, Huila

Town: La Marimba

Farm: El Roble

Altitude: 1750 MASL

Varietal: Colombia and Castillo

Process: Fermentation for 30 hours pulped and additional 40 hr fermentation, fully washed and dried in covered drier with vents

Notes: Cherry starburst, papaya,  toffee, chocolate

100% Arabica

We recommend that you grind this coffee a little finer than your usual settings.

This coffee is a micro-lot that won 3rd place in the Acevedo Cup 2020 which is run by Collaborative Coffee Source every year. It is deliciously complex, vibrant, and balanced with tons of sweetness. This is a special coffee from a very passionate farmer. 

Sandra Jurado is a seasoned farmer with 13 years under her belt and long family history. Her farm el Roble located in the hamlet of La Marimba has been growing coffee since 1989. She is a second-generation coffee grower after her grandparents. Her parents instilled the love of growing coffee and the importance it has in their community. Sandra is a very proud coffee grower and it shows in her final product. 

Acevedo is a municipality located in the south-easternmost corner of the Huila department of Colombia. wedged in the fork between the central and eastern cordilleras (mountain ranges) where the Colombian Andes, coming up from the south, split into three distinct mountain ranges (the western, central and eastern cordilleras). Just beyond the central and eastern cordillera convergence is the jungle and thus, moist, cool air. The affect that this has on Acevedo microclimates is that of a simulated increase in elevation—there is a wide diversity in humidity, temperature, and rainfall—leading to differing but ideal coffee-growing conditions. The variety found in the cup profiles coming from Acevedo reflects its array of microclimates. 

Acevedo coffees are anything but uninteresting, whether they’re grown at the higher or lower part of the elevation range. They are incredibly sweet, complex, and fruited cups. Standing on farms in Acevedo in the early morning or later afternoon, it is easy to understand why. Even at just 1,500 masl one usually desires a sweatshirt or light jacket as the sun is setting. In town (which is at just 1,300 masl) morning showers are downright unpleasant (a statement compounded by the fact that hot water is quite simply non-existent in this part of Colombia). From many farms, one can quite literally watch the cold air, accompanied by billowing, moist clouds, roll from the jungle overtop of the farms. This moist air makes drying the coffee a challenge, but it is confronting and beating this challenge by drying the coffees in raised, covered beds, which also adds to the fruited complexity of these beautiful lots. 

The town itself is lively—at night-time raucous—but basic commercial centre made up of restaurants, bars, bodegas, a couple of small supermarkets, and pharmacies that are mainly serving farmers and their families living amongst the surrounding hills and migrant agricultural workers. High-tempo music blares from competing loudspeakers everywhere from clothing shops to bars alike. Combined with the absence of tourists, the feeling one gets as an outsider is that of a rough modern-day cowboy town. The people, the geography, the climate, our exporting partner, and the team they have assembled there… so many factors combine to make truly remarkable coffees.