Description
Region: Colombia
Farm: La Villa
Variety: Gesha
Altitude: 1750
Process: Washed anaerobic fermentation
La Villa farm has a long history that traces back to 1965, when Juan’s father first arrived in the area. The family purchased the land a few years later and began cultivating beans and coffee around 1970. At that time, the Indigenous communities opposed coffee cultivation, so the first crops were grown discreetly among the weeds. Over time, the efforts of the federation helped establish coffee as an accepted and valued crop in the region. In 2005, through the initiative of the cooperative, La Villa farm participated in a local competition and won, receiving a significant prize. This achievement marked a turning point, leading to improvements in both production methods and coffee varieties. Today, the farm independently produces 90 % of its coffee on-site, using a wide range of processing methods to maintain quality and innovation.
Juan Darío, the son of Don Bautista, the original owner of the farm, grew up surrounded by agricultural life. From an early age, he assisted with planting, harvesting, and cleaning crops, which sparked a deep interest in coffee cultivation and processing. When he turned fifteen, he enrolled in a technical program for agricultural production at SENA, a vocational school in Colombia, where he focused on the use of organic fertilizers for coffee cultivation. In 2017, he began managing his own coffee plots, experimenting with a variety of processing techniques. Over the years, he developed expertise in both natural and washed methods, exploring different fermentation approaches and refining his skills in cupping and coffee evaluation.
The process begins with the careful collection of ripe coffee beans, typically within thirty days of reaching full maturity. The cherries are first immersed in water, allowing floating or defective beans to be removed. They then undergo a twenty-four-hour fermentation in steel tanks before being pulped to remove the mucilage. The extracted mucilage is combined with yeast and fermented in a bioreactor for seventy-two hours, developing additional complexity. After this stage, the parchment coffee is transferred to tanks where water heated to thirty degrees and the bioreactor wort are added. The mixture then undergoes an anaerobic submerged fermentation for another seventy-two hours. Following a light rinse, the coffee is moved to the drying area, where it dries over a fifteen-day period under controlled conditions.
