The very last bit of a popular offering, in this case we had to break the seal on a vacuum pack to do sample roasting so this is only a 35 lb. amount re-vacuum packed in two of our bags. This lot is a family effort between Maximino Gutierrez and the adjacent farms of his brothers and sons. They call it Finca Las Florestales, and it has already been recognized with a #11 spot in a recent Cup of Excellence competition. The family grows 100% Caturra cultivar at the end of this remote valley, at altitudes between 1600 - 1800 meters. It's consistently been a standout coffee from the Herrera area of Tolima, and this has to do with the careful drying of the parchment on the roof of their home, called a Casa Elba. Yes, as in Yemen, they created a flat roof "raised bed" for coffee drying. (It also protects the coffee from thieves and FARC guerillas, because unfortunately the Herrera area is still fairly unstable). Even though I have been to Colombia quite a few times, I can't visit this micro-region! Maximino's total production is about 20 bags of coffee. They use a pulper machine and then finish the coffee with overnight wet-fermentation, and then a rinse in pure water, traditional small-farm Colombia processing. The key is perhaps the careful drying I mentioned before, and the coffee is stored overnight in their house. The location is so remote that getting the coffee out of the valley can be an ordeal. The road was washed out for part of the coffee harvest time, and traverses a steep cliff (where more than a few trucks have gone over the edge with their coffee loads!) After we bought Florestales several years ago, I asked for help to track down Sr. Gutierrez to see if we could work on a longer term basis. With the help of Alejandro in Bogota we were finally successful, and this is our second Florestales microlot of 2010.