Colombia - El Encanto Gesha [25/26]

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Lightest Roaster Influence: We've really honed the approach for Coffees from Encanto over the last couple years, and it's now started informing our other large screen size Gesha roasts. Softer starts but much more energy into the middle, we're going for super fast roasts with lots of expansion. Soluble, but light AF. Light even for us - but peak aromatics preserved

Best Rested: 4-5 weeks+ - Can crack into early but it really opens up

Filter: 60g/L, 95-97°C whilst fresh but can come down to 92-93°C when well rested.

Espresso: 18g in, 50g+ out, 15-22s - turbo is best. Excellent soup

We’re tasting:

Incredibly aromatic - orange blossom, bergamot rind, and sweet orange friand cake. In the cup while warm the prominent note is of coffee blossom - a heady combination of lemon & jasmine, supported by lychee, vanilla custard, and charentais melon. As it cools, the florals become more like lilac. 

Traceability

The Story

LaReb - La Real Expedición Botánica - are a radical producer-owned export co-operative/movement. Their goal is to develop de-colonised supply chains and operate outside the typical multinational pathways of coffee, and it’s a mission that’s really resonated with us. By pooling together collective knowledge, financing, quality, export and import, LaReb members are able to define their own terms of engagement. It’s genuinely so refreshing to work with Herbert and the team, and we know we’ll only to continue to grow our purchasing relationship over the years. 

It was via LaREB that we purchased our first Gesha - and we've stayed in touch with Daisy since then, making sure we were eagerly committing to each new harvest that we could.

We caught up with Daisy directly prior to release, and she let us know that this year, the biggest bit of news was the weather. Extreme swings of hot and cold weather (the wild oscillations of El Niño amplified by global heating) had significant effects on coffee production across Colombia. Daisy reports the trees at El Encanto are healthy and productive despite the extreme swings, which is great to hear and a testament to both the soil health and the practice of growing amongst agro-forestry and shade trees. They have planted more shade trees this year - “Guamo Santafereño” otherwise known as ice-cream bean or Inga, which should help with the continued hot weather swings the subtropics are expected to experience as we add more carbon to the atmosphere. They have maintained the same production protocol as last year, and the coffee has remained very consistent - we're finding slightly more positive herbal florals in our first batches, like jasmine green tea & elderflower cordial.

A final update was the building of a cupping lab on the farm - allowing Daisy and Fredy to build quality feedback loops into their production, alongside the protocols and resources that come with being a member of the LaReb collective. We’re super happy to continue the purchasing relationship with El Encanto and hope to feature their coffee for many years to come.

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”.