Producer: Emmanuel Enciso & El Vergel
Farm: Finca La Roma
Region: Tolima
Variety: Caturra, Castillo, Colombia
Process: Washed
Altitude: 1650 - 1950 masl
Harvested: 2024
Cupping notes: Blackberry, sweet almonds, caramel, chocolate, panela. Citric and malic acidity. Sweet and balanced.
Cupping notes: Blackberry, sweet almonds, caramel, chocolate, panela. Citric and malic acidity. Sweet and balanced.
It is part of El Vergel's Partner Series, their program developed to empower coffee farmers with the knowledge and skills necessary to produce high-quality coffee, and gives them sensory training to help the partners develop their taste and aroma skills. The program also supports the partner producers in selling their coffee at a fair price.
This washed coffee hails from the Gaitania region, where Emmanuel Enciso is a coffee grower raised by coffee grower parents, who taught him everything about coffee. It consists of the output of just a few farms, and it's composed primarily of Caturra.
In 2006, he had the opportunity to learn more about processes, quality, and varieties, focusing his farm and several producers in the zone on producing specialty coffees. Still, he had a problem in common with the other coffee growers: they could not produce large quantities because they did not have a central processing centre for quality processes. That is why, in 2016, he began with his family to create a coffee processing centre that became a strategic bridge between more than 15 villages in Gaitania and processing the coffees of coffee growers throughout the area. That’s how the Black Condor Project began to build and develop the drying stations to receive the coffee and process it together to ensure quality and consistency.
Paying 30% above the market to the producers, El Vergel is working with 30-45 independent producers to make this Black Condor project sustainable and unique in the Tolima region.