MANOS JUNTAS

NOTES OF PASSIONFRUIT, LYCHEE, CACAO

MICROMILL: Manos Juntas
REGION: Sotará, Cauca
HARVEST: May – August
VARIETY: Castillo
ALTITUDE: 1,400–2,000 MASL
PROCESS: Natural (anaerobic)

Manos Juntas is a micromill in Sotará, high in Colombia's Cauca region, where ocean winds and elevation keep things cooler than almost anywhere else coffee grows in the country. Most of the coffee here comes from indigenous and Afro-descendant smallholder communities, farming small plots across a landscape of rivers, plateaus, and volcanic mountains.

Instead of processing their own coffee, farmers here sell ripe cherry straight to the mill by weight, which rewards picking properly ripe fruit rather than rushing the harvest. They're paid upfront too, well above market price, before the coffee's even finished drying, which usually takes over a month. It means growers can skip the cost of their own drying beds and fermentation tanks and just focus on growing good coffee.

Fermentation here ran five days, anaerobic in sealed tanks, with nitrogen introduced to keep the yeast working and each tank labelled by producer for traceability. Once it was cut, the cherry spent a few more days aging before moving to solar dryers for over a month.

It drinks boozy and tropical, a natural Castillo through and through, with notes of passionfruit, and lychee, and a candy-like, bubblegum sweetness throughout.

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