Asociation de Productores de Cafe Especial del Alto Saldana

Description

white grape, cacao, cola, heavy sweetness

Producer

Alto Saldana Growers Association

Region

Herrera & Rioblanco, Tolima, Colombia

Elevation

1500 - 1900 meters

Variety

Caturra, Colombia, Typica & Catuai

Process

Washed & Dried on Raised Beds

Harvest

Oct 2014 - Dec 2014

Storage

GrainPro™

Relationship

Direct Trade

El Meridiano is a selection of lots from the Asociation de Productores de Cafe Especial del Alto Saldana. The growers association is made up of nearly five dozen small scale coffee growers, each owning four to five hectares of coffee. The association is committed to producing quality coffee consistently every year, as well as providing technical assistance to its members. Most of the producers grow subsistence crops & shade trees alongside coffee, as their individual production is relatively small.

Together, these farms produce about one thousand 65kg bags annually, a mix of Caturra, Colombia, Typica & Catuai varieties. Each family manually de-pulps, ferments and dries their coffee on greenhoused raised beds before delivering to a warehouse for evaluation. Each lot that is delivered is scored to determine if it will be set aside as a single producer microlot or blended with lots of similar quality and branded with the El Meridiano label. Coffees below the quality mark are set aside and sold as lower grade specialty coffee.

Once separated, the Meridiano lots are sent to the dry mill for the final stages of processing. After the parchment is removed, the green coffee is mechanically sorted up to four times for size and density. After the mechanical sorting, it is then sorted another time using a machine called an electronic eye, which removes any impurities the mechanical sorting may have missed.

This level of sorting at the dry mill is not a common process in most specialty coffee. In fact, most coffees that receive an initial score go up a couple of points when the coffee is finished because of the strict milling procedures.

Electronic eye (optical sorter) at dry mill.

Text from Barismo's listing.