Colombia - Potosi Pink Bourbon

Café Granja La Esperanza (CGLE) is a remarkable illustration of a family’s ceaseless efforts across generations, and the consequent successes, in fostering a continuity of prosperity emanating from each of their estates to the greater, surrounding communities, which their founding patriarch and matriarch began a century ago.

Their first farm, Hacienda Potosi, is the nesting ground of a century-old love story revolving around family and coffee. It began in 1924, with a young husband and wife — Israel Correa and Carmen Rosa Vega —— acquiring the farmland in the highlands of Valle del Cauca to establish a homestead and livelihood for their growing family.

Among their 14 children, it was their daughter Blanca and her husband, Juan Antonio Herrera, who built upon their fledgling legacy by introducing new varieties Yellow Bourbon, Red Bourbon, and Caturra alongside the existing Typica, into its 2nd generation in the 1940s.

CGLE, as we know it now with its repertoire of prize-winning coffees, has largely been shaped by Blanca and Juan Antonio’s sons who are also the enterprise’s 3rd generation leaders, brothers Luis and Rigoberto Herrera. Their resolve and vision continue to propel their family’s dream into fruition with every lot of exquisite coffee they produce from five farms — Cerro Azul, Las Margaritas, La Esperanza, Potosi, and Hawaii — which are spread out across three mountain ranges in the Andes, at altitudes of 1,400 - 2,000 masl.

With the Herrera brothers’ unfaltering quest for quality excellence through intentional innovations in cultivating exotic varietals as well as in post-harvest processing, CGLE turns out astoundingly singular cup profiles that national and world coffee competitors frequently conquer the stage with — their most recent accolade being the World Brewers Cup Championship in 2023.

The Pink Bourbon variety is recognized as native to Colombia, reportedly with origins as an Ethiopian heirloom variety adapted to the Huila region, where it was first observed to be growing.

Its cherries are visually identifiable from other varieties by their comely rosy tone.

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.
Through the natural anaerobic process implemented by CGLE this lot’s full flavor potential was unlocked as layers of varied and intensified red fruit sweetness, with a tropical accent and balanced by subtly crisp acidity, enlaced in a confectionary richness.

Having collected only properly ripe cherries from the pickers, the cherries were manually segregated at least three more times. Sorters used visual and tactile cues to re-check the level of ripeness, and then proceeded to separate what they determined to be the good ones from the rest. Only these good, ripe cherries went into flotation, whereby floaters were removed and what remained went further into processing for two stages of fermentation and the requisite drying phase.

The whole cherries were placed in barrels which were emptied of oxygen using an air extractor and then closed, but not sealed, for an extended period reaching 166+ hours to encourage intensified fruity and nectarous notes to develop.

Throughout fermentation, the cherries were stirred, and temperature was monitored every six hours and controlled to remain within 30°C. One technique to maintain temperatures closest to the ideal range of 20°C to 25°C was to immerse the closed barrels halfway in larger receptacles of water.

Samples were also taken at pre-determined intervals for sensorial assessment, to ascertain whether the desired profile had been reached.

As for drying, the cherries were first dehydrated with utmost care in mechanical driers for 48 hours — for better control amid the terroir’s challenging weather conditions — and then laid out on patios to dry over a period of nine days, with sun exposure of 8 to 10 hours each day.