Visiting Our Partner Farms in Colombia

Last month Layla and I spent ten days in Huila, Colombia visiting two of our partner farms: Finca El Paraiso (the Ramirez family) and a newer relationship, Finca La Esperanza (the Montaño family).

We do these trips every year. They're not vacations. They're how we maintain the relationships that make our supply chain work. We taste new lots, discuss pricing for the next harvest, and see what's changed on the ground.

The Ramirez family has been growing coffee on this land for three generations. Patriarch Jorge Ramirez is 71 and still walks every row of his farm daily. His daughter Camila now manages most of the operations, including a new micro-lot program that's producing some exceptional natural-process coffees.

This year we locked in pricing for the 2026 harvest at $4.20/lb green, up from $3.85 last year. The increase reflects both rising production costs (fertilizer prices haven't come down) and the quality premium we agreed to for Camila's micro-lots. For context, the current commodity price for Colombian arabica is around $2.10/lb. We think $4.20 is fair for what we're getting.

We cupped 14 samples during our visit. The standout was a washed Caturra from the upper section of the farm (1,900 masl) that scored 88.5 on our internal cupping sheet. That lot will likely become a limited release later this spring.

This is our newest origin relationship — we started buying from Andrés Montaño last season after meeting him at a cupping event in Neiva. His farm is smaller (about 12 hectares vs. El Paraiso's 30) but he's doing interesting work with honey and natural processing that suits our lineup well.

Andrés showed us his new drying beds — raised African-style beds he built with a small grant from a local coffee cooperative. The improvement in his naturals since last year is obvious even before cupping. Better airflow means more even drying, which means cleaner fermentation.

We agreed to purchase 2,000 lbs from La Esperanza this season at $3.90/lb green. It's a smaller commitment than El Paraiso, but we want to grow this relationship gradually.

Direct trade isn't just a label we put on our bags. It means actual plane tickets, actual conversations about pricing, actual handshakes. It costs more than buying through an importer, and it takes more time. But it gives us something an importer can't: knowledge of exactly where our coffee comes from, how it was grown, and whether the people who grew it are being paid fairly.

We'll have the first lots from both farms arriving in April. Stay tuned.