Colombia - Eder Norman Toledo [Copa de Oro #2 Central Region]

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Lightest Roaster Influence: Sometimes the test roast just absolutely nails it and we feel we don't want to make any changes at all. It's a little bit closer to a "light" than a lightest because this coffee has SO much acidity and complementary sweetness that we don't want to take any off the table. Super rich and mouth smacking, it's a fast roast and pretty much straight down the middle for our style of roasting for a coffee like this

Best Rested: 4+ Weeks

Filter: 62g/L & 96°C, with rest we like to move down to 92°C

Espresso: Turbos - 18g to 48g in 22-26s. Excellent soup

We're tasting: Incredibly rich fruits of the forest aromatics - blind we'd say this was a classic Kenyan. In the cup it's vimto-esq with blackcurrant, blackberry, cherry, and ripe red gooseberry, with a juicy cloudy apple juice character. The cup is nicely balanced between the intense sweetness and bright acidity with a hint of umami, and as it cools we get a complex herbal/tropical note - reminding us of the vanilla & coconut of fig leaf.

Traceability

The Story

Finca Los Andes is located in the vereda of Las Palmas, in the municipality of Suaza, central Huila. The farm sits within one of Colombia's principal coffee-producing departments, an area characterised by volcanic soils and prime territory for quality coffee. Coffee here is grown alongside cacao and other crops typical of smallholder farms in the region, with Suaza forming part of the Central region within Osito's buying structure, alongside the neighbouring municipality of Garzón. Eder grows Castillo, Catimor, Gesha, and Rosado, with an average of 4000 trees per hectare over the 4 HA planted with coffee out of the 16 HA land. The farm employs up to 16 pickers during the peak of harvest.

The Copa de Oro is judged blind across three regions, South, Central and West, with the highest-scoring lots from each region ranked before an overall champion is selected. Suaza and Garzón fall within the Central region, from which this lot was placed second, behind only Hugo González's Gesha, itself named overall champion of the competition. Finca Los Andes previously appeared in the Copa de Oro under the name of Eder Norman's son, Yoan Arley Toledo, as they took the 1st place for the Central region also for their Rosado lot in 2023.

The Rosado variety has long been assumed within Colombia to be a natural mutation arising from red and yellow Bourbon, a supposition reflected in its name. More recent genetic work instead places Rosado instead within a distinct germline of Ethiopian landraces understood to have reached Colombia independently of the Bourbon lineage, rather than as a Bourbon derivative - hence our decision to standardise to Rosado (from Bourbon Rosado). There's a few distinct profiles we find (and prize) in more trad processed Rosados without mega high (see: "modern" ) processing intervention - one style sees high florals, citrus, Ethiopian-esq cups, and the other - of which this lot is an exemplary example - is like, RICH purple fruit, slightly savoury in a positive way, with a muscovado-esq fruity brown sugar backbone. A banger to be sure