03/03/2026
Our newest release on filter, produced by Alexander Cabrera, a washed Castillo.
We have long loved buying coffee in Nariño- it is geographically, climatically and culturally very distinct from neighbouring departments, and the cup profiles are no less unique. This coffee is a great example!
28 year old Alexander Cabrera’s parcels (El Guayacán and La Estancia) sit at a breathtaking 2250 masl and 2100masl respectively, and he has most castillo under production. He doesn’t have many shade trees on these plots because the high altitude keeps the weather cool, and the trees need all of the heat and sunlight they can get. Alexander’s grandfather left El Guayacán to him, but it used to produce beans and corn. Alexander first planted coffee on the farm six years ago after noting that temperatures weren’t as cold as they used to be when he was a child, and convincing his father that it could be an interesting alternative. He started with 1,500 castillo trees, and after slow expansion, now the farm has 4,000 trees. He proudly notes that six other neighbours now work in coffee after seeing his success!
When he first started planting coffee, Alexander attended a coffee processing workshop, and he has been experimenting since then. He and his family work with 10-15 pickers during the harvest season, and they’ve slowly built up the processing infrastructure- he uses a plastic tank to float cherries and keeps them in a sealed plastic bag for the initial fermentation in-cherry, and then he de-pulps and keeps the seeds in a separate sealed plastic bag for another 72 hours. He takes the washed, de-pulped seeds down from the farm and to his home in San Bosco where he has drying infrastructure set up- the coffee dries in 12-15 days.
