Roof Top Coffee Drying at El Zafiro
David, Eric and Hector, Finca La Meseta
Sometimes, you just have to wait for good things to come. That’s certainly the case with the new crop of Colombian coffees that just arrived at our Main St. roasting facility. Back track almost 6 months when we visited the town of Jardin in the Antioquia region of Colombia in December of 2015. We toured, tasted and selected two coffees that we would bring in this year. The first, from Finca La Meseta, is a coffee we’ve been working with for the past four years and are quite familiar with. The second, Finca El Zafiro, a much smaller farm with a very limited amount of coffee to export we thought would be the prize from the trip. And finally, it’s arrived and we’ve just finished roasting the first batch.
And while these farms are only a few kilometers apart, the coffees are actually quite different. La Meseta is as reliable as the horses we rode up steep mountain dirt roads and paths to get to the farm. Balanced with a full body and mild brightness, it’s the coffee we have depended on for years to provide an excellent cup to our customers. El Zafiro on the other hand, leans a bit towards the brighter sweet blackberry note along with a slight pepper spice providing a complexity in the cup one wouldn’t normally expect from a fine Colombian coffee. El Zafiro is also run by a large multi-generational family, each taking on specific tasks from finance to milling the coffee each day it’s harvested. Down the road at La Meseta, farm manager Hector greeted us again in December as he did four years ago on our first visit, proudly giving us the tour of the five story building that both houses his family and serves as the mill and dry storage for the harvest.
And at long last, we’re enjoying these two coffees at our cafes in Ann Arbor and are happy to be able to offer them to you in a cup or a bag. Enjoy!
David