Source Analysis by Charie Habegger
As lauded as southern Huila is with roasters all over the world, a true gesha separation from this part of Colombia is still exceedingly rare. This microlot comes from La Terraza, a high elevation family farm a few kilometers south of La Plata. Although it’s depulped and fermented like a washed coffee, the parchment spends the entire process, drying included, encased in its own sticky mucilage, which the producers are careful not to disturb, giving the final cup a delicate but distinct cake-like sweetness, alongside the subtle powdery florals that Panama geshas are known for.
Southern Huila
Huila is arguably Colombia’s best-known department for top microlots. Huila’s geographical accessibility, dense population of knowledgeable farmers, warm and subtropical forests, high elevations, and microclimate diversity have for many years sustained one of specialty coffee’s most beloved regions. The fact that most of the department is harvesting coffee almost every month of the year means that fresh coffee is always available.
Huila is a long and narrow valley that follows a winding gap between two large cordilleras of the Andes. Colombia’s 950-mile long Magdalena river has its source in southern Huila and has shaped the agriculture here for centuries. Uphill from the valley’s lush and picturesque lower slopes are a diverse array of coffee producing communities, often dramatically steep, and each with their own unique climate and history.
Finca La Terraza
Terraza is the name for the farm owned and managed by Juliana Guevara and Wbeimar Lasso, the duo behind the processor group Terra Coffee. The farm is very passionately run (with a delightful and educational Instagram account no less, @Fincalaterraza). Finca La Terraza resembles countless farms in this part of Colombia, being only a few hectares in size and in a very specific microclimate that encourages coffee trees to fruit nearly the full calendar year—requiring constant monitoring and harvesting in small quantities. This is the second time we have featured their washed gesha as Crown Jewel.
Wbeimar Lasso, a Colombian Cup Tasters Champion, agro-industrial engineer and third generation coffee producer, is also a bit of a tinkerer with processing. He has become notorious at Royal for multi-fermentation stages coordinated across small farms in Huila, delivering us some of our most unique and interesting coffees from this area.
La Terraza has a number of separated varieties, including pacamara, yellow Colombia, and gesha. The farm’s elevation means a cool climate with particularly frigid nights, which retards everything in coffee production that is temperature dependent, including the maturation of cherry on the tree, fermentation, and the drying of parchment. Indeed, this lot took 25 full days to dry on raised beds.
A Fermented... Honey?
The gesha selected for this microlot was carefully hand-picked and sorted for ripeness and consistency beyond the typical high standards of the farm, allowing only for top quality cherry and highest sugar levels to enter the lot.
Unlike honey processing as we know it, this coffee was depulped and then fermented in plastic tanks for 48 hours. When complete, the mucilage was broken down but not fully, and it was not rinsed or scrubbed away from the parchment like a washed coffee would have it. Instead, the parchment, and all its fermented mucilage, were moved together to the family’s solar drier, where it was spread in a very thin layer to avoid any contamination from fungus, mold, or bacteria (at this point the mucilage is so voluminous, wet, and warm, that the risk is high and needs to be avoided with precise technique). After the first 5 days of drying the mucilage coffee has shed much of its outer moisture and can then be safely piled much thicker; slowing the drying and allowing for a much longer period of evaporation and moisture equilibration. The total drying time is 25 days.
Once complete, the whole lot is moved into a storage facility. From there, the Terraza team withdraws a sample, which is allowed to rest for 15-20 days before roasting and cupping, to help the coffee shed some of its edgy flavors and better represent a rested offer sample to Royal.
Terra Coffee SAS – Beyond La Terraza
Terra Coffee SAS is a local producer group, established in 2016 by Wbeimar and Juliana, with a narrow focus on developing high quality coffees alongside select producers in the Huila and Nariño departments, and sharing them with the world. The small company manages one single producer association in each department where they work, “Ecoterra” in Nariño, with 140 producer partners, and “Terra Verde” in Huila, with 120.
For Terra Coffee SAS as a whole, quality in coffee is very rationally understood as a direct pathway to well-being for volume-limited, small coffee farming families. Driving their business model is an understanding that quality results from small harvests have direct impacts on not just the farm owner, but the many dependents on each small farm, including young children, older adults, and the women of the household performing essential labor that often goes unpaid. By increasing quality and placing microlots in the market, Terra Coffee SAS plans not only to increase prices to growers and their families but also to increase their sense of pride in the details of their work.
