It's an intense, sweet, and characterful coffee. From the first sip, a ripe, liqueur-like cherry flavor emerges, quickly blending with deep dark chocolate, reminiscent of classic Mon Chéri chocolates. With a full and enveloping body, it's an expressive coffee full of personality, perfect for slow enjoyment.
HISTORY
Huila, in southwestern Colombia, has a deeply rooted coffee tradition. Coffee is grown in 35 of its 37 municipalities, and almost three out of four rural families depend on it. With more than 146,000 hectares dedicated to cultivation, it is the country's leading production area, and within it, San Agustín is one of those mountain corners where specialty coffee has found its place.
There, in the town of Alto del Obispo, is El Rancho farm: twenty hectares, eighteen of which are dedicated to coffee, with a harvest that extends from April to December and 100% hand-picked. El Rancho belongs to the Cadefihuila Cooperative and has been owned by an association of coffee growers since 2013, who conceived it as a collective workspace dedicated to the development of specialty coffees and experimentation with different processes. Coffees from other producers in the area are also received at the farm, to take advantage of the capacity of the processing plant and reinforce this collaborative work focused on quality.
Behind it is Cadefihuila, an association that brings together 3,500 coffee growers spread across 28 municipalities in Huila, mostly small producers with farms of two or three hectares. This family model allows each stage (harvesting, processing, and drying) to be meticulously cared for in a way that is difficult to achieve on a larger scale.
VARIETAL AND PROCESS
Ombligón is a little-known and quite unique Arabica variety, grown almost exclusively in Huila. Its name comes from the bean itself: it has a characteristic mark that resembles a navel. Its origin is not entirely clear (it is believed to be a natural mutation of varieties such as Pacamara, Bourbon, or Castillo, and some attribute its kinship to some Ethiopian heirloom), but it shares many characteristics with Caturra: wide leaves, cherries that grow very close together, vertical branches, and high yields. It produces large, dense beans with few floaters and is resistant to rust. It usually performs best between 1,600 and 1,800 meters, so El Rancho farm's 1,750 meters suit it wonderfully.
The process is careful and very elaborate: the beans are harvested at their optimal ripeness and submerged in water to remove the floaters. Then they ferment in bags for 36 hours and undergo a second fermentation of another 36 hours, this time submerged in a mucilage prepared from a previous batch and fed with panela for a month. Once fermentation is complete, the coffee is rinsed twice and subjected to a single thermal shock with water at 60 °C. Finally, the batches are dried in dehumidifiers, which bring the bean to its ideal moisture content in about five days.
RECIPE
For filter: We use 18 g of ground coffee and 306 g of water at 90 °C. We start with a 56 g pre-infusion and wait 45 seconds, then complete the brew with successive pours until reaching 306 g, with a total brew time of 2 minutes 30 seconds.
