El Recuerdo

Coffee Description By Ciccio

We’re so happy to have Carlos’ coffee for the second time!
Specially because, in a coffee scene full of fermented coffee, we fall in love with the cup profile of this washed and elegant coffee.

Carlos Guamanga is originally from the department of Cauca. He moved to Huila when he was 15 years old and started working with coffee as a picker in different coffee farms.

Through trial and error, he has experimented with diverse post-collection processing techniques. Carlos and his wife, Patricia, believe in responsible, environmentally-friendly, sustainable agriculture practices and are meticulous in their stewardship and protection of the natural forest reserve that makes up part of El Recuerdo, their farm. Its harvest is a great example of the true essence of Colombian coffee, which is characterized by its clean cup, pleasing acidity and distinctive sweetness, as well as its sensory attributes exemplary of the traditional dry fermentation washed process.

El Recuerdo-“the memory”-reminds us of and renews our passion and love for our nation’s coffee.

This coffee was harvested through Azahar’s ‘Pickers Project’, which aims to end worker exploitation in the coffee industry. The project trains a team of full-time pickers and deploys them to partner farms. The pickers are paid salaries with the same benefits that Azahar’s other employees are entitled to, which is virtually unheard of in the coffee picking industry.

Process

After manual harvesting, the ripe cherries are fermented for 20 hours. Then, they’re depulped and left to ferment in tanks for 60 hours. Dried in marquesinas for 15 days.