August 2023

The coffee for 38 was Caturra variety from La Riviera, UBA Coffee, which is in Risaralda, Colombia (1750masl). This coffee was perhaps one of the most exotic ones in our collection. Not only the flavours were just dynamic, but also the whole complex process of picking, fermenting (Culturing) and drying is designed to have the end result in the cup. We also sourced the coffee for WBC runner up 2023 Daniele Ricci from this farm, differently cultured.

For this month, we could chat with Andres Quiceno, who is the culturing master at the farm and runs the farm together with the owner Julio Cesar Madrid for 12 years. Andres started experimenting with culturing, which is done with certain groups of bacterias and yeasts. He selects picked cherries and monitors and creates the perfect conditions for these micro-organisms to work on cherries in tanks. Every group of micro-organismums works differently and can be combined to work together (or against each other), which is the key thing for Andres to master. 

This month’s Caturra is named as ‘april’ to identify, cultured with groups combined with T and R (he has many, many combinations), dried under UV light to stop the fermentation fully. 

The complex journey results in super full mouthfeel with notes of orange candy, rhubarb jams, strawberry and black tea and citrus aftertaste.