LA GUACA, BOURBON AJI, COLOMBIA - FILTER COFFEE

This coffee, made from the (still) rare Bourbon Ají variety, comes from José Herman Salazar and his family farm, Finca La Guaca, in the Pitalito area of southern Huila, Colombia. It is a carefully grown and precisely processed coffee from a family business with a long-term focus on improving quality. The cup is clean and nuanced, with notes of apple pie and star fruit and the sweetness of panela.

At Finca La Guaca, the focus is on varieties with a high quality profile, and Bourbon Ají is one of them. Despite its usual name, the variety isn't actually a Bourbon: its roots trace back to the Ethiopian landrace group. The Salazars discovered it on their farm almost "by accident." Some of José Herman's Caturra seedlings produced a few trees with clearly distinctive and qualitatively superior traits. When the coffee from these trees was tasted and found to be exceptional, José decided to plant more of the variety and, from 2015 onwards, to focus even more strongly on specialty coffee. Today Bourbon Ají is already a significant part of the farm's production, and the Salazar family wants to show the world how excellent this variety is.

José Herman runs the farm together with his family. José is in charge of production and harvesting, his wife Marina manages processing and drying, and their daughter Blanca looks after the bookkeeping and farm administration. The family handles the harvest with great care. Cherries are selectively hand-picked and then soaked, and the floating, defective cherries are removed. The coffee is pulped without water and fermented for 36–50 hours in sealed tanks. It is then washed and dried for about 18 days, under a roof or in a solar tent depending on conditions.