El Diviso, Nestor Lasso, Colombia | Natural FSC-9571

Pitalito lies in southern Huila, in the upper Magdalena valley where the Central and Eastern Cordilleras meet, and is considered the largest coffee-producing municipality in Colombia. Nestor Neffer Lasso Zuñiga is the third generation of his family to grow coffee at El Diviso, a farm in the vereda of Normandía founded by his grandfather. With the work of the whole family and steady saving, they built the infrastructure to process differentiated coffees, aiming, in his words, for better quality "both in coffee and our lives". After a long period of trial and error they standardised several processes, and the better income paid for planting new varieties. The farm covers 18 hectares, 15 under coffee and 2 of forest, with 80,000 trees between 1,700 and 1,850 metres above sea level, alongside plantain and oranges. Varieties include Caturra, Colombia, Castillo, Tabi, Pink Bourbon, Red Bourbon, Yellow Bourbon, Bourbon Ají, Caturra Chiroso, Geisha, Sidra, Java and Pacamara. Coffee is processed as washed, semi-washed and natural, and dried on parabolic dryers, African beds and mechanical dryers. This Red Bourbon was grown at 1,780 metres and processed as a natural.

Cherry was floated so that only fully ripe fruit went forward, then fermented anaerobically in bags or jars for 70 hours at an average of 17°C. It was moved to a tank for a 28-hour oxidation, reaching a maximum of 42°C, then packed into 50 kg bags for a further 30-hour anaerobic fermentation at 16 to 20°C. The cherry then went into tanks of water at 45°C, with leachate from a previous harvest added, for 18 hours with occasional stirring. Drying took place on a parabolic system at a maximum of 32°C. At 18% moisture drying was stopped and the coffee held in dark bags in a dark warehouse for 60 hours, before it was dried in the same place to 11%.