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.
