Flavor notes from complex sugars to clean fruited hints, like apple, Monukka raisin, dried fig, pumpkin pie with whipping cream, and a honeyed flavor that hangs on in the aftertaste.
This Direct-Trade coffee from Inzá is made up of coffees from few neighboring producers in different villages in Inzá as micro-regional blend. (“Vereda” being the equivalent of a small neighborhood, or village). Sweet Maria’s local team in Colombia organizes farmers and provides the logistics from the local warehouses in the coffee-producing zones, through dry-milling and export. A lot of the work happens in the cupping. More room(s), local labs and the main one in Medellin, as well as at the Headquarter cupping room in Oakland. It’s important to make a distinction between the way we work in a country like Colombia, and the majority of Colombian coffee imported into this country. By this method, the farmers are fairly paid, far more than the so-called Fair-Trade price. Such project coffee practice of Sweet Marias has established for over a decades, one of the best example of what Direct-Trade is about.
The province of Inzá is located in Southwestern Colombia within the greater Department of Cauca. As you make the drive from La Plata to Inzá, you follow the Rio Páez, and an eventual crossing over a suspension bridge lands you on the road to the the villages whose coffees make up this blend. Like much of Colombia, Cauca is home to some very high altitude farms, many breaching the 2000 meter mark, the coffee from this lot harvested from an altitude range of about 1750 to 1900 meters.
The way we make up these regional blends is by cupping several samples from the individual farms, separating out those that meet a certain cup criteria, and then blending them together. It’s a great benefit to us (and not to mention the cup) having this level of quality control with our Colombian blends.
This is a wet-processed coffee, most farmers using old style hand-cranked pulpers, fermenting and washing in the same tank, and then drying out on raised, covered beds. Most farms have a healthy amount of Caturra planted, as well as some Timor hybrids (like Variedad Colombia and Tabi) in response to the major leaf rust outbreak in the 1980’s.
- Origin: Colombia
- Region: Inza, Cauca
- Cultivar: Bourbon, Caturra, Catuai, Typica
- Altitude: 1750-1900m
- Processing: Wet process (Washed)
- Drying: Covered sun-dried
- Sourcing: Sweet Maria’s
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