"Upon grounding the coffee has a dry aroma of orange peel, cranberry with hint of caramel. At first sip, citrus, grapefruit, cranberry with dried berry flavour. The coffee is very smooth and dense mouthfeel similar to yogurt."

This is a lot from La Palma y Tucan. La Palma y Tucan is of the same coffee processor, Equation Coffee, which also owns the Panama Creativa Coffee District (CCD). CCD branch focus mainly in operation in Panama while La Palma y Tucan focus on the coffee processor from Colombia. For this selection, they work with a farm called La Florida, owned and operated by Jorge Buitron.

La Palma y Tucan is led by Felipe Sardi. He is an innovator in coffee processing with the use naturally nurtured yeast for coffee processing instead of using premix based yeast for inoculation. All of its collection of under the umbrella of La Palma Y Tucan is fermented using this method.

Jorge Buitron is 55 years old and he has dedicated 40 years of his life in coffee cultivation and processing. His farm is not that massive, consist of 5 hectares in size and approximately 3.5 hectares has been used to cultivate coffee. From the 3.5 hectares, he owns 50,000 tree’s in total. Snr Jorge lives in the farm together with his wife, Ester.

Snr Jorge inherited the farm together with his wife from his parents and purchased some parts of the farm together with his wife. His children has moved away from El Carmen, Pitalito and moved to the city. Their children visits them regularly and have great interest in coffee production which something Snr Jorge look forward in the future.
Prior to working with La Palma y Tucan, he was producing commercial coffee for the the local Pitalito Cooperatives. Jorge prefer’s to work with Palma Y Tucan as it adds value and provides better export opportunity.

This lot is a 100% Papayo variety. It is rarely found outside of Huila Department. The tree is very strong and very productive. It is also highly resistant to rust and sickness. It is thought to be a Caturra mutation but genetic testing has indicate a close relationship with Ethiopian Landraces. The cherry is distinctive with an elongated shape which resembles Papaya fruit. When it is fully riped it is orange in colour, similar to Papaya.

What we have here is a Lactic processed coffee, classified as an anaerobic fermentation as minimal oxygen is used during the fermentation process. Once ripe cherries has arrived at the mill, they are first sorted and pulped. With no oxygen involved, the bacteria feeds on the carbohydrates that present in the mucilage favouring the high concentration of Lactic acid. The level of pH is checked daily until it reached the targeted pH. The whole fermentation process will take between 13 to 15 days.

Variety : Papayo
Altitude : 1750 masl
Origin : El Carmen, Pitalito
Process : Lactic