Finca Tamana is a 57 hectare coffee farm located in the mountains between El Pital and La Plata in Huila Colombia. It was acquired by Elias Roa in 2011 and is managed with great care by Elias and his family. A large farm by Colombian standards (the average farm size in Colombia is 2 hectares), the region is bursting with biodiversity and is home to a vast array of wildlife and tropical birds. Our director of green coffee, Damian Durda, has many remarkable memories from his visit to the farm, where he experienced not only delicious coffee, but wonderful food and hospitality as well; He was treated to excellent local fruits and homemade sancocho, a Latin American chicken stew, cooked by Elias’ wife, Bellanid, in her own kitchen- a terrific and memorable experience.
Ten years after purchasing his farm, Elias continues to be driven by the goals which were fundamental at the beginning of his farming journey- to make Finca Tamana a farm that could consistently produce the greatest coffees in Colombia while reducing environmental impact.
about the coffee.
Since first trying coffee from Finca Tamana, Damian’s long-time desire to buy and roast Elias’s coffee finally became a reality in 2018. This year we purchased beans from a lot of the Castillo variety, which was a stand-out on the cupping table among the many other shining lots from Finca Tamana.
The high quality of Elias’ coffee is no accident as great care, attention to detail and financial investments have been made at every level of cultivation and production. For example, coffee defects are hand sorted and removed and the coffee is rotated every few hours during drying. Furthermore, in 2019 Elias invested in a totally new processing facility, and is complimented by a meticulous coffee picking procedure. Coffee pickers are taught to harvest only ripe cherries, being incentivized by higher pay, and cherries are hand sorted after each session on a drying mesh with the removal of empty (floaters) or other defective beans. The coffee is then depulped (for washed process) and transported to a parabolic dryer. These steps may not appear revolutionary, however this much attention to detail is rarely seen at the farm level. These improvements and procedures have been implemented in close collaboration with Tim Wendelboe, who began working on farm improvements in 2011.
In addition, Finca Tamana is participating in a project with multi international fertilizer company, Yara, where several plots are analyzed for quality and yield of product. This research partnership potentially brings very valuable data for Colombian coffee farming in the future.
cup tasting notes.
prune, dark honey, white gooseberry
cup profile.
Silky body, high viscosity, sweetness of brown sugar and caramel, sticky and balanced. Well developed acidity of white gooseberry. Taste of dark chocolate and dark berries in chocolate, lots of prunes. Aroma of banana, cacao nibs, cocoa, raspberry and shortbread cookies.
transparency report.
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