Christmas Brews – Week #3
Available until Wednesday 24th December 

Nariño is a special place to love coffee – it is geographically, climatically and culturally very distinct from neighboring states, and the cup profiles are no less unique. Rich volcanic soils and an Andean climate (meaning a truly distinct harvest season where the rest of the Southern states are picking coffee all year round) make this a one of our favorite places to buy coffee. Producers are largely smallholders, there’s great biodiversity, soils are nutrient rich and well-drained, and we consistently purchase sweet and complex coffees here.

CULTIVANDO FUTURO
The town of Buesaco lies on a ridge, high in the Andes mountains, in the department of Nariño. On the outskirts of Buesaco, in Santa Maria, is the Cultivando Futuro association, which began with the support of the Social Group Foundation in 2019, which initially surveyed almost 2,000 producers before identifying the 28 founding members who all value hard work. The group offers services to members, including loans to purchase fertilizers, a lending library with specialized farm tools to share with one another, collective transportation to move coffee more efficiently, and a  centralized warehouse and cupping lab, staffed by a member who has been trained as a cupper.  The group has established themselves in the last five years, even supporting several smaller associations that are more further geographically isolated by coaching those producers who are newer to coffee production as they figure out processing best practices.

JUAN CARLOS BOLAÑOS
Juan Carlos and his mother Luz Mila work together to administer the farm- his mother prepares food to feed the workers and oversees the drying, and Juan Carlos works among the trees and manages the other processing steps. Palacinoy, where they farm, is characterized by hot summer temperatures with dry winds, and the farm attempts to balance this with leucaena and guamo shade trees. iTo process this lot, cherries are de-pulped and the coffee is left to ferment in an open cement tank for about 24 hours. From there, it’s washed and graded to remove the under-ripe seeds, and then washed again before it’s taken to dry. First, water drains from the seeds on a cement patio, and from there, it is taken to carefully dry in a covered dryer. Juan is a single father to his thirteen year-old daughter, and in the off-season, he works as a barber- he has a small salon in his home on the farm.

PRICING TRANSPARENCY:
We purchased parchment coffee directly from the association, and pesos are transferred straight to their bank accounts upon receipt of parchment at our chosen mill; we pay for transport from Nariño to the mill. During the primary harvest in Nariño, we paid $3,186,250 pesos per carga (125 kilos of parchment coffee, this is the unit farmers sell their coffee in) for Juan Carlo’s coffee.  For context, here is a link to the daily carga market price.