Colombia, Rafael Aya Martinez

Rafael Aya Martinez has grown coffee for more than two decades, though his ties to the crop reach back to childhood in neighboring Tolima. He moved to Huila at seventeen, where he and his wife, Elvira Cuellar, established La Virginia, a five-hectare farm with roughly three and a half hectares under coffee, intercropped with fruit, vegetables, and sugarcane. Since 2016, Rafael has dedicated himself to refining quality through careful selection and fermentation trials, work that has earned recognition well beyond Huila. For this lot, ripe Caturra cherries are hand-sorted, depulped, fermented, and washed before drying, a method that foregrounds the clarity of the varietal and the site.

La Virginia sits near the town of Timaná in southern Huila. Huila is known for its consistent high quality coffee production year after year. Huila’s volcanic soils and consistent rainfall support both a main harvest and a secondary harvest, along with its rich volcanic soils. This is a perfect growing region that produces much diversity depending on the varietal and producer of the coffee.