Colombia - Hugo González's Gesha [Copa De Oro - Grand Champion]

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Lightest Roast Influence: We'd like to think we're pretty good with Colombian Gesha of this style by now - super fast roast, on the very edge of what we can pull off, that maximises aromatics and complexity

Best Rested: 5+ weeks

Filter: 62g/L, 96°C when fresh, but you can go down to 92°C when rested.

Espresso: 18g/50g+/18-22s

We're tasting: Huge floral aromatics - we're finding fresh elderflower blossoms, honeysuckle and magnolia. In the cup it's creamy and very sweet - we find fresh tangerine, honeydew melon, and loquat, with a zippy white wine acidity. As it cools becoming more delicate - we find white tea, lemongrass, and dried jasmine

Traceability

The Story

One of the pleasures of running a green buying program is the ability to chose with whom you work. Having had the pleasure of working with Stuart Ritson (European director for Osito) over 10 years ago in a different job, we were quietly impressed with the work Osito was doing. While many importers might talk the talk, we've been impressed with Osito's commitment to the mission (In short - buy all the grades, not just the crazy lots; pay consistently above-market rates, and commit to long term partnerships no matter what happens). As a result, it was one of the very first importer meetings we had - before we had even settled on a name for the roastery. Since then, Osito has been one of our key supply chain partners - supplying the Brazil for Facility as well as microlots from Burundi, India and Uganda. 

But Osito's true home is in Colombia, where the company was first founded in 2018. It's here that some of the longest partnerships and strongest sourcing work is done for the company. Having started purchasing parchment from producers in Suaza, La Plata, and San Agustín in Huila, they constructed their own dry mill and HQ in Garzón several years later. As a way of identifying superlative quality & rewarding it (both monetarily with prizes but also visibility to international buyers), they've been running competitions each year - first small regional focused comps like the Copa de Occidente in La Plata or the Copa Suaceña in Suaza, before rolling it all into one multi-region behemoth - the Copa de Oro (not to be confused with any similar named football cups!)

In the Copa de Oro, producers submit lots for evaluation. Osito's lab and QC team will pre-select the best performing, and an international set of judges (from Osito's roastery partners) will blind cup through table after table, and the most consistently top performing lots make it to the finals. There are 5 winners for each of the main buying regions in Huila that Osito works in (Central, West, South, respectively) - and one overall grand champion winner, the lot that outperformed the rest. We're stoked to have secured 2 vac boxes of that very coffee, from producer Hugo González. As a result of winning, Hugo received a prize of 15 million Colombian Pesos per carga (125kg of parchment) - a price 6x times higher than the Precio; the price for coffee set by the FNC (Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia, the NGO that among many other roles sets the daily base pricing for internal coffee sales).

The Copa de Oro competition is a great example of Osito's commitment to paying fixed prices above market rates, in that the competition is very much not an auction - the prizes are fixed and known ahead of time, the results are fair, unlike an auction where a lot can fail to find a buyer, Osito are guaranteed to buy the coffee and take the risk that it might not sell - although there is often a mad scramble to try and secure these lots.
This year was one of the first times Copa de Oro lots have made it to the UK and EU, and we made sure that were were front of the queue to make selections off the back of that knowledge, and we're stoked to be among the first to share - we have one tiny other allocation which we'll hopefully get out soon. As part of promoting the coffees, we were delighted to host Osito for a buyer's cupping of these lots prior to landing at our own HQ in Southwark.

Hugo González is a producer new to Osito and the Copa de Oro - but one with a solid history of production, and known in the world of speciality. His 3.5 HA farm Finca El Edén is in Garzón, the spiritual home of Osito, and it's one of the very first times that coffee from Garzón has won - either top of the regionals OR overall grand champion. Hugo is a third generation coffee producer, and he purchased El Edén 14 years ago. With 2.5 HA of the farm in production, he's growing high grade cultivars such as Chiroso, Java, Gesha, and Sidra; and his 3 children are all actively involved in the future of the farm, managing their own plots on the farm.