[85] Scenery x Simmos x Finca El Encanto - Desert Island Coffee

AVAILABLE DIRECT FROM SIMMOS WHILST STOCKS LAST!

Scenery and Simmos have been working together since shortly after the Fish Island café opened. Four firsts come together in this release: their first birthday and first collaboration coffee, featuring a fresh crop lot from Daisy and Fredy Acevedo at Finca El Encanto. Two years ago, their coffee was the first Gesha Scenery ever bought - and this year’s harvest brings the first honey process Gesha they’ve produced for export. 

This is our third time purchasing from Daisy & Fredy Acevedo, and it’s safe to say we are fans of their work. Daisy and Fredy take a holistic view of coffee production - focusing on genetics, the health of the land & trees, alongside precise control of the processing intervention to produce what we consider to be an exemplary Gesha.

Daisy and Fredy believe the farm has reached a special moment. Daisy tells us the trees are more mature, the shade canopy has expanded and risen, and the topsoil is denser, creating a more balanced environment that’s reflected in the cup quality. Their mill setup is seriously impressive, and by developing their own local roasting setup and QC lab alongside their work with LaREB has seen their quality go from strength to strength.

If you could only take one coffee to a desert island to drink for the rest of your life - we think this Gesha would be the one. 

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter or Turbo Espresso

Lightest Roast Influence - We're edging somewhere between Lightest and Light for this one, as Simmos will be running this coffee on all brew methods on their bar. We wanted to ensure max solubility at the light roast degree, so we've maximised porosity and bean expansion in the roast - Daisy's Gesha is genetically from Panama gesha accession, rather than the more common Colombian Geshas which oft have some cross-pollination in their history.

Best rested for: 3-4 weeks

We asked Louis at Simmos to write their brew guide for this one! They recommend:

We’re tasting: Super floral aromatics of jasmine, chrysanthemum and bergamot. In the cup
it’s peach boba tea, bergamot marmalade & orange blossom, with a bright
juicy acidity and honeyed mouthfeel. As it cools, becoming like white tea

Traceability:

The Story

We've been working together since not long after Simmos opened their cafe in Fish Island - and it's been an absolute blast of a partnership. When Louis and Xiao Ye reached out looking to potentially do a collab release to celebrate their first birthday, we eagerly agreed. Having arranged a table of fresh crop offers - always a challenge to co-ordinate logistics, availability, and everyone's calendar schedules when looking at PSS/offers (perhaps by the time you get everyone in the room, that coffee is already sold!) - we managed it. There was strong competition but on a blind table that included some high intervention Colombians, it was the trad processed honey Gesha from El Encanto that came out heads and shoulders above the rest.

A real testament to the work that Daisy and Fredy have put into their farm - the health of the soil, trees, and overall ecosystem means that the raw, genetic expression of their coffee is impeccable, and careful but meticulous processing can elevate it without overwhelming.

We think it's the perfect combination of meaning - such a brilliant coffee, great producers and cementing our intention to keep working together, and we know Simmos will do Daisy & Fredy's work justice in showcasing this delight of a collaboration.

Finca El Encanto:

Daisy Acevedo and her Husband Fredy are second generation coffee farmers from Colombia. Having met in Panama as economic expats, they learned about the nascent speciality coffee scene in the late 2000s - fortuitous timing to be in Panama, as the 2002 Best of Panama auction saw the Elida estate gain a record breaking $2.37/lb for their winning lot. This was 5 times the commercial price for coffee, a staggering amount at the time -  profitably above the cost of production at a time when international coffee prices were emphatically below it.  This moment was the (re)discovery of the Gesha/Geisha variety, where modern “third wave” coffee really started to pick up momentum worldwide. 

It certainly did in Panama, showing (speciality) coffee farming could be a viable business proposition, and a few years later it brought Daisy & Fredy back to their native Colombia, and back to coffee farming.

Having collected seeds from original Panama Gesha seed-stock (the exact source is said to be a very famous farm, but precise provenance is kept a closely held secret), they returned to their native town of Risaralda, where Daisy’s father Gustavo has a farm. It is on Gustavo’s farm that Daisy first planted a trial plot of Gesha. Early harvests from these first trees were sensational, and saw buyers from La Cabra as well as Herbert and Ana from La Reb (luckily for us, Ana is Gustavo’s neighbour) visit to find out who - and what - was producing these stunning coffees.

In 2017, Daisy and Fredy made the move permanently back to Colombia, buying Finca El Encanto, which is located 1680 metres above sea level in the municipality of Filandia, in Quindío. 

Taking seed stock from the trees they planted on Gustavo’s farm, they grow 4 HA of Gesha with 6000 trees with plans to expand production. A further 6 HA of the farm is planted with the rust resistant Castillo variety. All of the coffee on El Encanto is grown under shade trees, with a considerable part of their farm (5 HA) kept as native forest. Part of the success of El Encanto can be attributed to Daisy’s training - she has a specialisation in the management and conservation of natural spaces. Thanks to this success, El Encanto now employees 5 permanent workers alongside the Acevedo familia.

The production from Encanto combines the genetic potential of the Gesha variety, well executed processing and the natural climate and geography of Quindio to produce top class coffee - a true taste of provenance. Hats off to Daisy, to Fredy, and to Herbert and LaReb collective - we’re excited to work together more in the future.

[FOOTNOTE] For reference, converted to kilos, using historical foreign exchange data and adjusting for inflation - that record breaking price converts to about £5.92 per kilo green in today’s money [Sep 2023] - still notably higher than commercial coffee these days, but around the price we would pay for a “blender” lot. The 2023 BoP winning lot cleared $10,000/kg (or £8,250/kg, give or take a bit of exchange rate wiggle)

[FOOTNOTE 2] On the is it “Gesha or Geisha” debate - we fall on the side of “Gesha” - While perfect transliteration from Ethiopian languages (both the major and minor) to English is considered nearly impossible to achieve, the commonly accepted spelling of the mother-forest this variety originated from is is “Gori Gesha”.