Colombia – Cauca

This “Veredas Vecinas” blend is made up of coffees from neighboring villages in Inzá, Cauca. While the regions are hardly neighboring each other, the veredas (“villages”) where they were pulled from are. The bulk of the coffee is from a buying operation in San Antonio, within the Southwestern Colombian region of Inzá de Cauca. As you make the drive from La Plata to Inzá, you follow the Rio Páez, and an eventual crossing over a suspension bridge lands you on the road to the villages where we buy coffee. Like much of Colombia, Cauca is home to very high altitude farms, many above the 2000 meter mark. The coffees that make up this lot were harvested from an altitude range of about 1500 to 2000 meters. This is a wet-processed coffee, most farmers using old style depulpers that are powered by hand-crank or small motors, then fermenting and washing the coffee in the same tank, and finally drying the coffee in covered drying rooms called “parabolicos”.

The dry fragrance has balanced sweetness and low tones, with accents of unrefined sugars, molasses, brown bread, and bittersweet cocoa in the more developed roasts. The wet crust has a very attractive smell of caramel and malt syrup, with hints of toasted nut, and peach pie filling. Veredas Vecinas delivers deep low tones with flavor profile of bittersweet chocolate torte, Dutch drinking cocoa, and a note of dried date. This coffee is big-bodied no matter roast level, with pleasing, rounded mouthfeel that lends to a long aftertaste. For those looking for a Colombian espresso option, expect syrupy chocolate with a flash of dried fruit, viscous mouthfeel and lasting bittersweet finish.