Colombia - Inmaculada Fellows Farms Lot 662

Fellows’ Farms is the collective designation for the group of individual, smallholder coffee farmers in Valle del Cauca’s southern neighboring coffee-growing region, Cauca, who mostly cultivate traditional Colombian coffee varieties and collaborate with Finca Inmaculada for post-harvest processing, to improve and diversify the cup profiles of their coffees.

During a chance meeting between Finca Inmaculada and Cauca coffee farmers, or Fellows, in 2022, the Inmaculada team learned of the latter’s difficulties to preserve and enhance the inherently good quality of their coffee cherries, primarily due to the complications posed by climate change and the attendant costs.

The initial solution to achieve the immediate aims around maintaining and possibly elevating cup quality potential while alleviating the Fellows’ financial condition was for Finca Inmaculada to begin buying small batches of their harvests at a premium, to develop the best possible flavors at Inmaculada’s processing facilities, and also to grant them bonus payments as commensurate to any upsides of quality.

Having observed that their incipient involvement had clear, material benefits for the Fellows, the Inmaculada team decided to reinforce their engagement to foster more sustainable gains, such as through educational drives that promote the agroforestry concept alongside practicable knowledge updates to improve cultivation and harvesting practices.

The Pink Bourbon and Castillo varieties are both recognized as native to Colombia.

Pink Bourbon, whose cherries are visually identifiable from other varieties by their comely rosy tone, reportedly originated in the Huila region and spread to other regions because of its resilience and sensory qualities. Meanwhile Castillo was developed by Colombia's national coffee research institute, Cenicafe, in 2005, as a hardier yet more flavorful improvement over earlier cultivars like Colombia/F6 and Tabi.

Pink Bourbon, when washed, is frequently associated with a distinctive complexity boasting bright fruit notes with touches of rich caramel and tangible hints of florality. Castillo, meanwhile, is typically associated with predominantly chocolatey and cherry-like attributes with streaks of citrus.

Through the natural anaerobic process, Finca Inmaculada was able to harmonize and accentuate the respective characters of Pink Bourbon and Castillo, to create a novel and balanced cup expressing a crisp, clean, and fragrant sweetness interlaced with multi-layered acidities.