La Caturra Purpura is our second coffee, and we didn’t wonder very far from the first one. We love a good, special Colombian coffee, and this time we chose a really rare one from a farm called Finca Monteblanco. Monteblanco’s name comes from its location, perched on the very top of a mountain, often surrounded by clouds.

In charge of the farm is Rodrigo Cortez and his family. Rodrigo has been farming coffee for more than 15 years and a while ago he started involvement in experimental projects with innovative partners in his locale, each with a complementary focus (growing and processing methodology, varietal experiments and roasting/tasting), but all with the same goal of finding new, better coffee varieties. This open approach, he says, helped him to find the true potential of his coffee.

Rodrigo first developed a curiosity to experiment with his coffees when he discovered “La Caturra Purpura” or Purple Caturra. Only 26 trees out of a lot of 20000 had this unique mutation in their development of leaf growth, but Rodrigo confirmed some fine and distinctive nuances in cupping with Wbeimar Lasso, a coffee cupper from Pitalito. Subsequently he bred an entire lot of this variety in his second experimental farm and, following years of dedication on the farm and in the quality control lab, the coffee was ready for small batch commercialisation.

The coffee grows at around 1700 meters above sea level and is picked during their peak June crop. After experimenting with different ways to process it, Rodrigo and his team settled on a natural process.  The cherries are dried in parabolic dryers (where the sun hits directly) for three to four days and in drying beds for 45 days (under plastic screens) to be free of water and guaranteed without moldy beans and phenolic defects.

It is delivered in small batches and roasted in Bucharest with a 20% development. Then it’s packed in high quality bags with one-way degassing valves, allowing gases to escape and you to capture the bold aromas of coffee after roasting, yet keeping air outside and extending the product freshness. We use both black and white bags, with no difference in content.

All picture shown are for illustrative purpose only – packaging may differ slightly.