Farm: Colombia Familia Garcia
Notes: Sweet, Intense, Cranberry, Marzipan
Processing: Washed
Elevation: 1,700-1,900 MASL
Varietal: Castillo, Colombia
Region: Nariño, Colombia
Color: Agtron 67 Whole Bean | 105 Ground
About
Nariño is a new region for us to source from. It's one of those regions that just delivers consistently incredible coffee, and this lot is no exception. This coffee hits you with sweetness right from the start, building into an intense, fruit-forward experience that lands somewhere between cranberry tartness and the rich, nutty sweetness of marzipan. It's balanced, approachable, and exactly what we want in a daily drinker.
More About The Coffee
Nariño is Colombia's southernmost coffee-growing region, bordering Ecuador and sitting in the shadow of the Andes. The dramatic slopes and valleys create a unique microclimate where warm, humid air from the lowlands rises up the mountains at night, allowing coffee to thrive at elevations much higher than most of the rest of the country—sometimes as high as 2,300 meters. This temperature modulation slows cherry maturation, giving the beans more time to develop complex sugars and bright acidity, which is exactly what makes Nariño coffees so distinctive.
The Castillo and Colombia varietals that make up this lot were both developed by Cenicafé, Colombia's national coffee research center, specifically to combat coffee leaf rust (la roya) while maintaining high cup quality. Castillo, released in 2005 and named after researcher Jaime Castillo, is a hybrid of Caturra and the Timor Hybrid, designed for disease resistance and high yield. The Colombia varietal, developed in the 1980s, shares similar goals. Both varietals have faced skepticism in the specialty coffee world due to their robusta heritage, but when grown with care at high altitudes and processed meticulously—as is the case here—they can produce exceptional, clean, fruit-forward cups.
This particular lot comes from smallholder producers in the Nariño region who bring their cherry to centralized washing stations for processing. The washed process highlights the coffee's natural brightness and clarity, stripping away the fruit to reveal the inherent sweetness of the seed. The result is a coffee that's approachable enough for everyday brewing but layered enough to keep things interesting cup after cup.
