Colombia | El Camilo

Finca El Camilo belongs to John Jairo Rojas and Sonia Granados, who farm coffee in the village of San José outside Amagá, in southwest Antioquia, Colombia. John's father gave him his first farm in 1982, when he was fifteen, and he planted 500 trees and ran everything himself on what his father had taught him. John and Sonia married in 1993 and grew the farm together, to 4,000 trees by 1998 and to 18,000 today, and their children, Camilo and Ana María, now work the harvest alongside them.

The coffee grows at 1,800 to 1,900 meters under plantain and banana trees, which shade the coffee and give the family a second income between harvests. The family makes its own compost and uses no pesticides. The variety is Castillo Rosario, a Colombian variety developed to resist coffee leaf rust.

This Finca El Camilo lot is a semi-washed anaerobic. Ripe cherries are hand sorted, sealed in bags without oxygen for several days, then pulped and left to ferment again in a tank of water before they are washed and dried on raised beds.

This Colombian coffee comes to us direct trade, via our partners at Paisa Coffee. Paisa was founded in 2015 by Yolima Taborda Rojas, who grew up on her family's coffee farm in Antioquia and works directly with the families whose coffee she brings to roasters in the U.S. This is our second season carrying Finca El Camilo, and we're glad to have it back.

Whole bean.