Farm Info

This lot of Caturra Bourbon Blueberry is harvested and produced at Finca Monteblanco – a farm located on the very top of a mountain, in the San Adolfo municipality above Pitalito, a family farm managed by Rodrigo Sanchez Valencia and his wife Claudia Samboni, following the coffee-growing tradition that began with his grandfather. In the 14 hectares of Monteblanco farm, Rodrigo and his team have achieved several exotic varieties’ ideal growth and productivity. This is possible thanks to the farm’s environmental characteristics allowing Rodrigo to cultivate top-quality Gesha, Pink Bourbon, Pacamara, Purple Caturra, and Red Caturra, among others.

Each harvest, Finca Monteblanco produces micro-lots that serve as competition coffees around the world. Coffees from Monteblanco are milled and prepared for export at the new, state-of-the-art Aromas del Sur dry mill in Pitalito.

Caturra Bourbon Blueberry Process

For this process, the Caturra and Bourbon variety was chosen, thanks to its versatility in the preparation of any process and the great sweetness, which allows the micro-organisms such as lactobacillus and saccharomyces cerevisiae to have an optimal fuel to work. These micro-organisms are initially cultivated separately before incorporating them into the coffee, giving way to a large scale where a significant volume of starter culture is produced.

For this specific process, a total of 80 litres of starter culture is extracted from a 200-litre drum which had been mixed with the nectar of locally sourced blueberries. This allows the Brix degrees of the initial mix to be equal to that of the coffee cherries.
The starter culture takes 8 days to reach its optimal state, exactly 190 hours of fermentation until the culture mixes with the infusion and reaches the adequate pH and Brix degrees to enter the coffee.

In the case of the Blueberry process, a blend of wild fruits such as blackberry, and blueberry are added and put to ferment. Rodrigo feeds the yeasts with some energizing ingredients, such as molasses or brown sugar until the desired level of fermentation with an excellent load of microorganisms is achieved.
Subsequently, after collection, and sorting, the coffee gets pulped and deposited inside a fully sealed 200-litre plastic can along with the 80 litres of the fermented nectar solution that had been previously prepared.

The coffee starts then to ferment for 150 hours, and the team constantly measures the Brix degrees to not drop below 6 as well as the pH levels which are not allowed to drop below 4: this is the balance point for the coffee to highlight the notes of the berries.

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