Climpson and Sons - Single Origin: La Belarmina Microlot, Sotara, Colombia

Last year our fellow Climpsonite Nile Robbins had the opportunity to travel to Colombia in search of great coffee from the region of Cauca. He came away after cupping the best coffees of the area, ranking them and then purchasing these coffees in a live auction.

Here is the first of three of our specially sourced microlot coffees available.

Because coffee depletes nitrogen from the soil they are grown amongst inga trees which offer both shade and fix nitrogen in the soil. This lot of coffee was left in the fermentation tank for 12 hours. Because it rains a lot during the harvest season the coffee is dried on beds which can be carried into the house

Nile's trip to Colombia

At the end of last year Nile went on a mission to Colombia to seek out the best coffees in the region of Cauca. The Cauca Best Cup cupping competition saw a group of twenty roasters from around the world cupping the top 40 coffees from over 200 submissions. The goal was to narrow this down to the top 10, rank them and then hold a live auction - and auction with the aim to purchase some of the best coffees in the region - where the roasters bid on the coffees while surrounded by over 300 producers cheering them on.

Cauca is a department or state in the south west of Colombia where the coffee is of high quality but not necessarily recognised for it. What was so great about doing this was that Nile and the other roasters had the chance to communicate with the producers what they were looking for in a coffee. The answer was simple: quality – and that we are willing to pay for it. An important exchange especially being able to back it up in the live auction where coffees went for some great prices. The sixth through to tenth ranked coffees for example went for around $4.50 which is more than twice what producers are getting on a normal day for their coffee.

It was quite an experience for Nile, having not participated in a cupping with the producers being there to see the results of their hard work materialise. He has also not participated in a live auction before – quite a thrilling experience especially when he had to convert USD to GBP.

He came away with three delicious micro-lots, all of them scoring in the top 4 with over 90 points. We are excited to share with you the first of the three.

Cauca coffee harvest

Colombia is bisected by the Andes Mountains which split into three parallel cordilleras (mountain ranges) as they run south to north. Coffee grows throughout these mountains from North to South with the addition of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, an isolated mountain range in the North of the country where a number of indigenous tribes produce coffees.

These three mountain ranges produce diverse microclimates and to make it more confusing the majority of Colombian coffee territory has two harvests: Principal and the Mitica (which is typically a smaller harvest).

- In the North the Principal harvest is in November and the Mitaca is May- June.
- The South has the opposite of that; Principal is May to June and Mitaca in November scattered across the country in some of the most biologically diverse landscapes in the world.

Cauca coffee producers

The producers in Cauca are men and women with passion for their land, usually members of the producer communities, indigenous descendants. In cauca are 94,000 producers, with 84,000 hectares in coffee production.

The average production in Cauca are 20-25 coffee bags per hectare.

Roasterr: Climpson and Sons

Climpson and Sons does not deliver to United Kingdom