Aponte - Espresso - Washed Coffee

TASTE NOTES
Almond, Red Apple, Dried Apricot

VARIETAL
Caturra

PROCESS
Washed

ALTITUDE
2150 masl

Aponte is a small town located in the Inga Resguardo Aponte on land belonging to the Inga indigenous group, in the far west of the country on the border with Ecuador. This is and has been a really tough area to produce coffee. In the past the region was controlled by drug traffickers and guerrilla groups and now the community has to deal with a fault line that runs straight through the town.

Fernando Ordoñez is the co-op’s liaison with Aponte, and he noted that specialty coffee is particularly important to Aponte because the town is essentially the end of the road, and further up into the mountains farming tends to produce illegal crops. The stronger the purchasing power of the co-op, the more opportunity it creates for landowners to have a sustainable, legal livelihoods.

Each producer has a small mill area for depulping, washing, and drying on their farms. They process coffee daily as it comes freshly harvested from the trees. In Colombia it is common for cherries to be processed on the farms where they are grown. Coffee trees are typically planted right up to the walls of the mill and cherries usually go straight from harvest buckets into the hopper.