
Cerro Azul Geisha
This is the eleventh year we have purchased Cerro Azul, a coffee several of our baristas have taken to the world stage, in both Barista and Brewer’s competitions. Cafe Granja are intimately familiar with the care and attention the Geisha plant needs, they were one of the first to bring it to Colombia, having previously owned a farm in Panama, the adopted home of this lauded varietal.
This translates into their excellent work at the farm level; this coffee is a true representation of the potential of the Geisha varietal in Colombia. Clean acidity, intense and distinct flavours, and some of the most incredible aromatics we have come across in coffee.
Cerro Azul was chosen by the experts at Granja as a perfect location for the development of high quality Geisha cherries. The location of the farm is further southwest in the Cauca Valley than Potosí and Las Margaritas, closer to the state capital of Cali, and to Colombia’s Pacific coast. The cool breeze from the Pacific combined with the very high altitude mean that the trees have to fight low average temperatures and large day-night swings in temperatures to survive, concentrating energy into their cherries as sugar. This leads to a high level of both sweetness and intensity of flavour in the final cup.

Sudan Rume
This is the ninth year we have purchased Sudan Rume grown on Cafe Granja La Esperanza’s Las Margaritas farm. Always stunning us with its strong varietal characteristics, we once again look forward to the distinctive Sudan Rume aromatic character. The Sudan Rume varietal has been lauded for its cup quality, partly down to competition success, but it hasn’t always been this way.
The Sudan Rume varietal originates from modern day South Sudan, in what is now the Boma National Park. The park lies just across the border from Ethiopia, inside the small area where Arabica coffee still grows completely wild. Sudan Rume, or RS-510 as it is officially designated, is indeed an heirloom or ‘wild’ varietal, mainly used as a stock of high quality genes for new hybrid varietals. There are very few commercial plantations of pure Sudan Rume due to its low yields and susceptibility to disease, but Granja have planted a 4.8 hectare plot on Las Margaritas, and it has consistently produced outstanding results.

Café Granja La Esperanza
This incredible quality of raw material has to be treated with great care at each further stage, in order to preserve the potential created in the field. Luckily the team at Cafe Granja La Esperanza consistently take care of these stages of the process with aplomb. This lot has gone through a double fermentation, similar to many of Granja’s washed lots, first fermented in closed tanks for 20 hours before de-pulping and a further fermentation of 35 hours in open tanks. Finally, the parchment coffee is washed and dried slowly in mechanical driers. This leads to an excellent balance between the heavier sweetness generated by the long fermentation, and the clean and transparent feel that the washed process allows us to maintain. This is the quintessential Cerro Azul Geisha, with crisp white floral and citrus aromas followed by a dense sugary sweetness, crisp peach and white tea in the cup.
