Who grew this coffee

Luis Anibal Calderon farms above Acevedo, in the south of Huila, at 1,550 to 1,600 m. He started with a very small plot given to him by his father, and has expanded it since, changing how he processes the harvest almost every year.

He was a top-30 finalist at Huila Best Cup in 2016. He and his family run the farm together as a team, which in practice means the picking standard is a family decision: only ripe cherries go in, and anything else is left on the tree or sorted out later.

His processing is unhurried. A dry, sealed ferment of 25 hours, then an average of 25 days in a parabolic dryer. Drying that slowly is a choice about risk as much as flavour, because a natural lot left in humid air is a lot that can be lost.

The region explains part of the quality. Huila sits between the central and eastern ranges of the Andes, and the variation in elevation gives it some of the most complex growing conditions in Colombia. It accounts for close to a fifth of the country’s production, but around 80 per cent of the producers there work on less than three hectares. The coffee is good because it is farmed at a scale where individual decisions still show up in the cup.

Facts on the farm and process come from the lot sheet supplied by Cafe Imports, P# 26039.