About the Farmer
Luz Helena has grown coffee for 20 years on Maracay, her 8-hectare farm at 1,450 m.a.s.l. in Armenia, Quindío, where she grew up. Her passion started at home, listening to her husband Jairo Arcila talk coffee as a farm worker and dry mill manager. With his support (and his bug-fighting know-how, which she needed early on), she learned to grow high-quality, ripe cherries. With Cofinet’s support, she now focuses on specialty coffee, with her cherries processed at La Pradera. Away from the trees, she spends time with friends and volunteers with local support groups for vulnerable people.
About the Process
Only perfectly ripe cherries are picked, then bagged in GrainPro and taken to the La Pradera processing centre. There they’re hand-sorted and floated to remove anything underripe or defective. The cherries go through a 45-hour aerobic fermentation to bring out rich, origin-driven flavour, then dry slowly for 8-12 days (on raised beds or in the elba drying station, depending on lot size), turned regularly for even drying. The result is a fruity, sweet, full-bodied cup, dried to a moisture content of 9.5-11%.
About the Varietal
Caturra is a spontaneous Bourbon mutation from Brazil, Caturra gets its name from the Guarani word for “small”. Its short, dense frame is easy to harvest and lets farmers plant more trees per hectare. It thrives at 800-1,600 m.a.s.l., especially up high, with notes of citrus, red berries, stone fruit and caramel. Once nearly half of Colombia’s coffee, it’s vulnerable to leaf rust, so after 2008 billions of trees were swapped for Castillo, a rust-resistant variety with Caturra in its family tree.
