Flavour: Papaya, kiwi, floral
Producer: José Daniel Munoz Ordonez
Origin: San Augustin, Huila - Colombia
Culitvars: Pink Bourbon, Geisha
Process: Wet fermented, washed and dried on raised beds in shade
Daniel Munoz is a fantastic producer that we started working with in 2018. He bought his 5 hectar farm Villa Camilla in 2012 and started producing a few years ago. Anne met Daniel and visited his farm in San Augustin in November 2018 and has been there many times since then. Daniel is a very progressive thinking farmer, and has been taking cupping lessons with Fairfield Trading in San Agustin. He is also working close with Esnaider Ortega who is a fantastic grower, roaster and cupper running the lab in San Augustin and also helping other farmers with quality control at the farms. Daniels own farm – villa Camilla – is very well maintained and his attention to detail is impressive. To be able to know when the cherries are perfectly ripe and ready to be picked he is using a Brix meter to measure the sugar content of the pulp. Since the cherries are pale pink-orange in colour it can otherwise be a little challenging to determine when they are perfectly ripe.
When Daniel took over the farm in 2012 it was in a rather poor condition. The previous farmer had crammed in 5000 trees of Catimor per hectar and the first thing Daniel did was to cut all of them down and replant with Pink Bourbon and now also Geisha. His wife Naydu was shocked and upset but Daniel asked her to trust his judgement. Now, almost 8 years later, Naydu is super proud of Daniels achievements and also slightly embarrassed that she didn’t support him from the start. When he replanted his land with Pink Bourbon and Geisha he only planted 2500 trees per hectar to give the trees plenty of room as he believes they will be healthier and stronger if they don’t have to fight for the nutrients. He also has planted lots of ground vegetation to keep the soil moist and also to provide nutrients and he has several beehives to make sure the flowers are pollinated efficiently.
Every step of the production is carefully monitored and the smallest of details are logged and saved so that Daniel can go back and analyse how the taste relates to the processing of the coffees. His production is fully organic and he is convinced that this is the only way forward.
There is no doubt that Daniel is producing extraordinary organic coffees but what is even more important to us is that he has the right mindset, a heart of gold and is someone we now call a friend.
