La Esmeralda (Natural, Chiroso, Colombia)

Back to Buenavista for another installment from Cesar Buesquadillo and La Esmeralda.

For those who missed it in our earlier releases, Cesar transformed a commodity production farm into an innovative seat of learned processing, growing high-scoring premium lots. He’s benefited from a partnership with Cofinet, who support farmers with science-backed processes to boost quality and yields.

This time we have a Chrioso varietal. It’s a less common varietal, growing on compact trees that thrive at higher altitudes and cooler climes, and enjoy high yields. Its roots trace back to a natural mutation, and further back to the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia. It has recently gained greater popularity in competition coffees like Cup of Excellence and professional brewing contests due to its complexity and distinctive taste.

This lot undergoes a 45-hour extended fermentation, following which the cherries are exposed to parabolic dryers, then layered thinly on beds to maintain even airflow and temperature control. The cherries are then dried for 10–15 days to allow the sugars from the fruit to permeate the bean, imparting a wild fruit character.

The result is something quite wild and delicious. Huge fruit in this cup: guava, tropical fruit juice, lychee, and Parma violets.

We’ve roasted this for filter to accentuate the delicate and sparkly fruit sweetness, and mitigate that caramel which is so easy to tempt with higher intervention coffees like this one. That said, you can brew this how you want—it’ll be wicked as a traditional espresso ratio, a more modern turbo at greater ratios, or as a special weekend pour-over.

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Farm : La Esmeralda, Buenavista, Quindio, Colombia
Process : Extended Natural
Varietal : Chiroso
Elevation : 1750 - 1800 MASL