Sparkle Plenty | Colombia | El Rancho Ombligon

This Ombligon comes from El Rancho, a farm in Alto del Obispo outside the town of San Agustín, in southern Huila, Colombia. El Rancho has belonged to Cadefihuila since 2013, a coffee growers' association of 3,500 members across 28 municipalities in Huila, most of whom farm two or three hectares with their families. The association uses the farm to grow specialty varieties, experiment with processing, and take in coffee from other producers to keep the mill thriving.

Ombligon is a rare variety grown almost entirely in Huila. The name comes from ombligo, Spanish for navel, after the pronounced navel at the base of the cherry, and while its genetics have not been fully worked out, it is usually traced back to Ethiopian landrace coffee. This lot grew at 1,750 meters.

The process is an extended, multiphase inoculation. The ripe cherries were floated to pull out the light ones and sealed in bags to ferment for 36 hours. Then they were submerged for another 36 hours in mucilage inoculated with a culture from an earlier batch, one the team had kept going with panela (raw sugar derived from sugarcane) for a month. After that the coffee was rinsed twice, given a single thermal shock in 60°C water, and dried in dehumidifiers, reaching its target moisture in five days.

It comes to us via our partners at Paisa Coffee, founded in 2015 by Yolima Taborda Rojas, who grew up on her family's coffee farm in Antioquia and works directly with the growers whose coffee she brings to roasters in the U.S.

Ombligon is a Sparkle Plenty release, ten-ounce bags with the holographic tag, and our Sparkle Plenty list hears about it first. We have 52.8 pounds of it.