flavor of peach, mandarin, strong orange blossom floral aroma, ending like a lemon tea.
Finca Monteblanco, located high along the winding mountain roads of Vereda La Tocora in the San Adolfo municipality above Pitalito, is a family farm managed by Rodrigo Sanchez Valencia in the tradition of coffee cultivation that began with his grandfather. Monteblanco’s 18 hectares sit on the crest of a hill, with the wetmill and drying facilities at the top and slopes of coffee planted below.
In 2002, Rodrigo participated in a local program teaching children of coffee producers to cup. Before that, he and his family had never considered coffee in terms of cup profile. By learning to differentiate profiles, he, his father, and grandfather were able to make the connections between the farming techniques they applied and coffee’s attributes in the cup. At this time, Rodrigo also began to learn about cupping competitions that evaluate the best lots from farms in a region. He noticed that farms would win one year and then never again, so he decided to investigate how to produce quality coffee consistently. In 2017, Rodrigo and his team at Aromas del Sur—the company built to unify all the farms he owns and manages: La Loma, El Progreso, and Monteblanco—constructed a cupping lab on La Loma to facilitate sample roasting, crop evaluation, and sourcing at origin. The lab overlooks the farm and the valley of Pitalito, with coffee trees and other crops dotting the rolling landscape.
Rodrigo and his team introduced Gesha to Finca Monteblanco in 2016. The seeds were a gift from a client, originally from a farm in Panama. Planting new varieties is part of a development project together with other producers in the region to improve the genetic diversity and resilience of the coffee fields. Gesha is naturally roya leaf rust resistant and its trees have a tall, elegant form, with lots of space between the branches. This makes for slightly lower yields but easier harvest selection of the ripest cherries.
Natural process of Finca Monteblanco has a unique cold fermentation steps before putting on beds to dry. Cherries are first packed in GrainPro bags and placed in a refrigerator with a temperature between 12-15° C for 52 hours. Next, cherries are removed from the refrigerator and left to rest for 8 hours to reach ambient temperature. Cherries are then taken directly to solar drying beds where they dry three days, after which they are transferred to shaded beds to dry for the remaining 30-37 days.
- Origin: Colombia
- Region: Huila
- Producer: Rodrigo Sanchez Valencia
- Farm: Finca Monteblanco
- Altitude: 1730m
- Cultivar: Gesha
- Processing: Natural
- Sourcing: Pebble Coffee