[19] Colombia - Finca El Jaragual (Rosado) [CROP 23/24 ARCHIVE]

Jonny & Jorge's banger Rosado lot ran from 20/03/2024 to 03/07/2024, with a brief gap in the middle while we waited for the sea-freight to catch up. Thanks to us air-freighting this initial lot for LCF (London Coffee Festival), to our knowledge we were the first roastery in the world to release coffee from this farm.

We’ve known of Jonny Martinez through our work in the industry for some years, but when we got the opportunity to try the first harvest of coffee from a farm he co-owns, we were blown away at how good it was.

We’re certain El Jaragual is going to join the pantheon of world class farms over the next few years, and are stoked to be here on the ground floor, sharing a coffee we definitely love.

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

This coffee is picked from the first harvest of young trees - so our goal as roasters is to bring out the bright acidity, sweetness and aromatics, while minimising any fresh herbal notes. A touch more development while still being quite a light roast does the trick

Best rested for: 2-3 weeks

For Filter: We recommend a ratio of 60-62g/L and 96°C water

For Espresso: 18g in, 45g out, 25-30s for a classic style of espresso, although faster turbo-style shots work wonderfully well too.

We’re tasting:

Very fruity aromas - passionfruit and papaya. In the cup it’s very sweet, with the floral sweetness of ripe white peach, dense strawberry syrup. As it cools the acidity becomes like blackcurrant and strawberry cordial, with apricot and icing sugar in the finish.

Traceability:

The Story

It’s hard to work in the green buying side of the UK coffee scene and not know about Jonny Martinez and his import company MiCafe. Jonny has been the exclusive source for coffees from the famous Wilton Benitez and his farm Granja Paraíso 92, and has armed many a champion for competition or roastery looking for a jewel on their offer sheet. 

Jonny helped us massively with sourcing coffees for this year's United Kingdom Barista championship, and through that process we also had the opportunity to try something very unique - coffee from his own farm, the first harvest, with processing inspired by Wilton’s world famous techniques.

One of our sourcing goals with Scenery is to work with vertically integrated, producer owned supply chains where possible - and to not just follow trends, only buying the "hottest" name producers. Suffice to say we are firmly impressed with this first harvest from El Jaragual and expect the quality to only go up from here.

Finca El Jaragual sits at 1500 MASL in the Amalfi municipality of Antioquia, Colombia. This region is nestled in the northern section of the central spine of the Colombian Andes mountain range and is ideal for growing high quality coffee. The farm is named after Jaragua grass - an African wild-grass that has become naturalised to Colombia, frequently grown for feedstock and fodder, drought resistant and hardy.

Originally a 150-hectare plot, the farm was briefly split as Jonny’s cousins acquired 90 HA about a decade ago.  The remaining 60 HA were purchased by Jonny and his brother about 5 years back, in 2019 - with the work between now and then converting part of the farm back to coffee production and waiting eagerly for the first harvest. 

The majority of El Jaragual is planted with forestry, thanks to Jonny’s cousin's experience as a forestry engineer. A mixture of pine forest plantations being grown for sustainable timber, alongside protected plots of native forest.

Jonny and Jorge are growing 7 varieties at El Jaragual, under plantain shade trees - from the more classic Castillo/Colombia to Rosado & Typica Mejorado. They are planting new cultivars at the moment, such as Ombligon, Sidra, and Laurina.

Coffee trees will typically take from 2-4 years before bearing the first fruit, more often on the longer end of the spectrum. Harvests from young trees are frequently described to be “tight” - the flavour equivalent perhaps of a flowerbud yet to unfurl. Sometimes young trees can also present with some astringency or herbal notes, but they’re marginal in the lots here thanks to good plant husbandry.

We’ve selected 2 varieties from Jonny - first up with this lot is a Rosado, a contraction of “Borbon Rosado” reflecting both the updated genetic knowledge about this variety (no bourbon lineage), as well as the widespread adoption and cultural symbolism it has to Colombian speciality production. We won’t be using the terminology “Pink Bourbon” in any future releases.

The processing at El Jaragual has been done with a deft touch - extended ferments, with yeast inoculation, and some thermal control (hot water washes, cold water crashes) to modulate the fermentation rate and green porosity, but without any trace of funk or boozy character.

Overall, an increased amount of technical intervention in the processing, but not on the level of bioreactors and lab plants - a really nice bridge between the classic style of processing and the new, something we can really get full throttle behind in supporting. 

Having tasted this first harvest from Jaragual, we’re certain it’s going to join the pantheon of World Class Farms, and we'll do our best to help promote that.