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The Story:
Colombia ranks third to Brazil and Vietnam
in world coffee production. Unlike Brazil and Vietnam, much
of Colombia's coffee is high quality Arabica, grown at high
altitudes on small peasant farms, carefully picked and wet-processed.
The Colombian Coffee Federation, with their
spokeman Juan Valdez, Colombia has done a great job of marketing
their coffees to the US market. Unfortunately, their habit
of combining the coffees of many small farmers for the sake
of consistency has compromised the efforts of the best farmers
and the coffee grown in the best micro-climates.
This coffee is exported by C.I. Virmax Colombia
S.A., an exporter that works outside the normal Colombian
channels and does a great job sourcing excellent coffees
- they took the title of “Coffee of the Year”
at this year Specialty Coffee Association Expo this year
with two of their coffees placing in the top ten of 135
evaluated.
El Castillo hails from the same region as
the 1st place coffee, and Alterra works with Virmax and
is the exclusive buyer of El Castillo's coffee. Each lot
is screened and cupped at origin as well as at the lab in
Milwaukee, and the best lots are selected and blended to
create an intense but balanced coffee with pronounced, sweet
acidity and full body. This is great Colombian coffee.
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