La Cristalina

• Country: Colombia
• Region: Quimbaya, Quindio.
  
• Altitude: 1.450 m.a.s.l.
  
• Varieties: Castillo
  
• Processing Method: Natural Fermented
• Drying Method: African Beds

La Cristalina Coffee from Quimbaya, Quindio Colombia

La Cristalina is a family farm of nineteen hectares with more than a hundred years of continuous work. Guillermo Grajales owned it until his death in 2015, when he left it to his sons Alberto and German. Maria Grajales, of the fifth generation, has run the place since then and began experimenting with natural processing in 2015. Coffee, chiefly the Castillo variety, is the main crop. A few plantain and orange trees grow there as well. In 2019 the family began planting different cacao varieties in the hope of securing income against the effects of climate change.

Flavor Profile:

This coffee tastes of chocolate truffle and cocoa nibs, with an intense note of figs. There is also the flavour of ripe plum, red wine and other ripe fruit. The aftertaste settles into chocolate and hazelnuts. The acidity is medium, juicy and malic, like plum. The body is creamy.

Processing:

Pickers select the best cherries by hand. These are put into a tank of water; the lighter, floating cherries are removed. The water is drained and the remaining cherries are left to ferment for sixty-four hours under plastic sheeting, allowing controlled contact with air. The next morning the cherries are spread on African beds inside a drying tunnel for two days, then finished in a mechanical silo for another two or three days to prevent further fermentation. Any remaining defective cherries are picked out during drying. When the beans reach 10.5 per cent moisture they are packed, in the cool of the afternoon, into GrainPro bags inside sisal sacks and stored for a month and a half in a warehouse kept at 21 °C with steady air flow, until the coffee is uniform and stable.