Colombia Inzá Las Estrellas

"Las Estrellas", is a name we use for a regional blend of high scoring coffees from Inzá, Cauca. This season's Las Estrellas is only 11 bags made up of coffees from 6 different farms in Veredas San Antonio, Belén, Betania, and La Palmera. We see a similar trend of cultivar planting and processing techniques in this region. Most of the farms are less than 2 hectares in size, Caturra heavily represented, with Variedad Colombia and Typica mixed in. The majority of coffee production is performed using depulpers powered by small gas motors or by hand crank, then fermented overnight, and finally drying in covered drying rooms ("parabolicos"). The latter helps protect the unstable, wet parchment from the elements, and ventilation facilitates good airflow and even drying. Altitude on the low end is about 1500 meters and tops out closer to 2000. We used to purchase our coffee through a local cooperative in Inzá. One of the main families (the "Pillimué" family) at the local coop we used to buy from ventured out to build their own buying operation adjacent to tneir home and store in the village of San Antonio, Inzá. They've invested their own money in erecting a warehouse where they can buy and store coffee and a state of the art coffee lab for processing farm samples, cupping, and training exercises for those interested. It certainly helps that they are well connected within the community and neither volume nor quality have suffered one bit under their direction! You can read more about the operation in our blog post Colombia: New Projects, Familiar Faces.