Organic - Finca Santa Maria Lavado

This lot comes from Finca Santa María, in the town of Zapatoca. The farm is located near the Yariguies Serrania reserve and shares the rich ecosystem of the tropical Andean forest, which we help preserve and restore. Santa María is managed by Oswaldo Ardila and his family, overseers of all the farm's work. Oswaldo helped with the post-harvest of this lot, from choosing which lots to harvest with his Brix meter to making sure drying was even.

When Joel M. Villalta, the manager of the Forestal farms, first started working with farmer Francisco Serrano he knew little about coffee. It was 10 years ago and he had just left university with a degree in Agribusiness Management. Today he is the company’s project director, overseeing the operations of four (soon to be five) farms: Santa María and La Esmeralda in Zapatoca and San Sebastián and Los Pinos in Aratoca. He is also involved in Serrano’s roastery, helping the team with the roast profiles on a 12kg Diedrich. 

 

Francisco Serrano made a career in business decades ago in the cattle and poultry farming. It was later on that he decided to go into coffee following his father Marco’s steps. Today, however, he works in the background, trusting Joel and his team to look after the coffee. The combined operations of growing and roasting are named Forestal, Café Artesanal (Artisan Coffee).

Forestal’s farms have been fully organic since 2005 and the plots are laid as groves where coffee trees are shaded by both native and introduced timber species such as the galapo, the guamo, and the nogal cafetero. These trees are the department’s favourites. They grow tall, as high as 20 m, and have small leaves that help filter the intense sunlight without blocking it. 

In Santander, most farms renovate their crop in cycles of 5 to 8 years to avoid a decrease in yield and as a form of pest control. Joel has a different approach. At San Sebastián, for example, some coffee trees are 35 years old. And he is not having them cut down any time soon. “Up to a point, research shows that older trees have slower metabolism or ‘breathing’, which leads to slower sugar development,” explains Joel. “And in coffee, everything is better when done slower,” he adds.

Joel started experimenting with different varietals and processing around 4 years ago. He sowed seeds of Gesha, Pink Bourbon, Tabi, Pache, Pacamara and even SL-28, creating a varietal garden. The farms also have great results with more traditional varietals such as Castillo. The extra sweetness in these coffees comes from a double fermentation process in cherry and later in pulp before washing and strictly controlled drying conditions in different stages: pre-drying, followed by 36 hours at 40°C in a silo and finishing up on raised beds depending on the coffee. 

Technology and high standards are not the only highlights of Forestal. To reward his staff, Francisco Serrano implemented a co-operative model on his farms. All his permanent members of staff, just under 20 workers, receive a percentage of the company’s profits at the end of the year. “It is a social model of business in which one-third of the revenue is shared between us,” explains Joel.    

This will be the second time Joel sends coffee to the European market. With coffee shops in two cities and wholesale clients from Bucaramanga to Bogotá and the United States, all their specialty-grade was roasted in Colombia. Joel welcomes visitors and, having travelled abroad a few times, wonders why more foreign roasters won’t go to origin when farmers are doing so at much less favourable exchange rates.