Notes: Milk chocolate, walnuts, nutmeg, red apple, sugarcane

Varietal: Castillo

Process: Fully Washed

Drying Process: Sun-dried

Roast: Medium Roast

Region: Cauca

Farmer: The Indigenous Tribe: Misak

Altitude: 1,800 - 2,300 masl

Weight: 250g

OUR THOUGHTS

We've been searching for a new high-quality chocolatey coffee to add to our collection for a while and one has finally landed in our shops! Silvia is an incredibly smooth coffee, packed with sweet and nutty notes that linger on your palate and leave you with that satisfying feeling many coffee-lovers chase when looking for the perfect chocolatey coffee.

ORIGIN

Within Cauca, one of the infamous coffee-producing regions in Colombia, there remains a collection of unique indigenous tribes that still produce coffee with much culture and tradition. One such group are the Misak people, or Children of Water, the producers of this lot. These people have a unique connection to Mother Earth and are considered guardians of its resources.

The territory they call home is called Guambia, situated at the foothills of the Central Cordillera, right in the backbone of Colombia within the Andes. Thanks to the towering peaks and volcanoes this region has a plentiful source of water in addition to ideal microclimates for the slow development of coffee. Additionally, Cauca has been able to preserve its indigenous culture and tradition with respected tribes and communities still working to produce high-quality coffee.

Primarily growing Castillo, the 500 or so families this coffee comes from are located in two zones: the Rural Zone and the Indigenous Zone around the town of Silvia. Producers in this region also grow plantains, argum and sugarcane, providing the coffee with shade and giving producers a more diversified income. Diversifying income is important, especially since transportation and picking costs have increased.

Producers utilise natural fertilisers such as coffee pulp, thus reducing environmental impact by relying less on chemicals. Each producer carefully hand picks his or her coffee, and the cherries are placed into a tank of clean water whereby any floating cherries are removed to ensure quality is maintained. Pulping (the process where the external skin is removed from the seed) then occurs on each farm via machine. Fermentation begins next as the exterior mucilage is slowly broken down prior to drying. Drying is then completed in the open sun.