Colombia - El Jaragual Rosado [24/25]

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Lightest Roaster Influence:
We're finding this fresh crop lot to be receptive to an extra-light roast - while developing the coffee further pushes some interesting grapefruit notes, keeping it extra light brings more rose florals & strawberry syrup to the fore.

Best rested for: 3-4 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:

Intense, fruity/floral aroma - strawberry & rose. In the cup - passionfruit & mango icecream, strawberry syrup. As it cools, some super interesting tropical aromatics - hoppy, pomelo-esq round out a delight of a cup, with pronounced strawberry sweetness.

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.

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. 

We're convinced El Jaragual is going to be a world renowned farm - having been one of the first roasters to showcase their work, we've been stoked to see some serious heavy hitters bring this coffee on.