This gorgeous coffee from Totoro in Colombia is chock full of beautiful tropical flavours. It has a lovely mango and pineapple fruitiness with a deep brown sugar sweetness offset by the pineapple acidity and a long lasting finish. This is a lovely coffee and one we are loving. Time to get those summer vibes started!
Coffee from Totoro, Colombia
This coffee comes from four coffee growers who are part of the COMEPCAFE cooperative based in Piendamo, Cauca where it was established in 2010. The cooperative has 1400 families as members, spread across 7 areas within Cauca with 1600 hectare of coffee farms. The farms are traditionally planted with castillo and colombia with a small portion (5%) of typica and caturra. The coop helps to support their members with technical support, commercialisation of the coffees, food security programmes as well as a pension programme looking to protect the growers in the future.
The farms of Feliciano Yunda, Santos Ossa, Patricio Yunda and Jose Basilio Yunda are located in the indigenous reservation La Aguada-San Antonio. They are part of the Nasa ethnic group (Paez) that work on own and community lands. The varieties grown are Castillo, Colombia and some others such as Caturra, Typica and Bourbon in this region. The coffees are pulped on the farm in a traditional beneficio on small pulping machines before then being dry fermented in tiled tanks overnight for 12-16 hours. After this the coffees are dried for 7-10 days in parabolic tents on raised beds.
The areas that these coffees come from are still very much involved in the troubles with them being heavily influenced by the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the People's Army) and the illicit drug trade making life very difficult for these producers. It is a high elevation area in the upper part of the western foothills of the central mountain range and the soils of this region are volcanic based.