Colombia

La Palma y El Tucan

/Behind the story/

This coffee is very special to us at PAGA, and we are very happy to introduce it as our first coffee release. La Palma y El Tucan is an extraordinary farm, mill and coffee eco-tourism tucked in the mountains of Zipacon, Cundinamarca. Founded by Felipe Sardi and Elisa Maria Madrinan, located at 1,600 masl, only 2 hours drive away from Bogota. The farm’s name determined the concept at the core of their operations: symbiosis, where actions are mutually beneficial, the same way that palm trees and toucans exist in a balanced relationship within their habitat. La Palma El Tucan approaches the coffee ecosystem through sustainable production, innovative processing with extreme attention to details. The farm is the state of the art processing facility, where they process coffee cherries purchased from neighboring farms for their Neighbors & Crops Series.


/The Neighbors & Crops Program/

In 2013 founders of La Palma y El Tucan developed a plan to work with neighbors to create a sustainable relationship model. The goal of this program was to support financial, social and economic model for neighboring coffee producers in Cundinamarca. They have identified about 200 farmers in their area within 10km radius to take apart, most of them are small holders owning one hectare of land or less. With such a limited space, it is almost impossible to build a processing facility that will result in high quality coffee. Additionally, the farmers mostly cultivate varieties that are know for their ability and disease resistance, such as Castillo that have the potential to produce delicious microlots. Due to their very small farms size, a single producer is unlikely to produce sufficient cherries in a single day to fill a ten bag lot, so lots are usually composed of cherries from five or six different producers. The lot will keep the name of the producer who has the most cherries in a single lot, which in our case is señor Hector Morales. He is in charge of his 6-hectare farm and does most of the responsibility and for coffee production has allocated 4 hectares of the land. Hector is 58 years old and has been working with coffee for the past 13 years, before joining the Neighbors & Crops program (N&C) he used to sell his coffee to a local buyer in Cachipay and says that he found it very difficult to do the wet and drying process, especially in rainy season. For every kilogram of cherries a producer sell to La Palma El Tucan they receive organic fertilizers to use on their coffee trees, created specifically by a experienced team of agronomists and chemists. This free organic compost saves producers money and reduces their reliance year after year, plus it improves the quality coffee. Therefore the neighboring families are paid with 50% more then the national average with the N&C for their coffee cherries as well as given additional coffee trees grown at La Palma’s nursery.


/Brew guide/
Age to drink: 5 days after roast
Coffee amount: 15g
Water amount: 250g, ppm 100-125
Temperature: 93-94 Celsius
Pours: 4 pours, 50g, 70g, 60g, 70g
Brewing time: 2:20-2:30