This coffee comes from Oliverio Naranjo’s farm Finca El Cedral in Los Alpes, Tolima, Colombia.
We’ve been enjoying seeing more and more amazing quality coffees coming out of the Tolima region of Colombia.
Tolima’s always had great promise: the combination of climate and altitude were right for high quality, and it’s bordered by powerhouse coffee-growing regions like Huila and Cauca.
Until recently this was hampered by FARC guerrillas who were based in Planadas, making it difficult to work with farmers and complicating the export of coffee of crops. The Colombian government signed a peace treaty with the rebels in November last year, which we’re hoping allows the region’s farmers to trade easily with the rest of the world.
It’s focused on the region of Antioquia rather than Tolima, but the New York Times recently had a photo essay about travel in Colombia’s coffee belt that shows how beautiful the countryside is, and also touches on the FARC peace deal.
What does acidity mean?
If you think of Colombian coffee as rich and bold, Oliverio Naranjo’s crop will be a change: light bodied, with low acidity and with some delicious fruit notes.
When we talk about acidity, we’re talking about flavour and vibrancy that comes from types of acid that occur naturally in foods. The easiest example of this is biting into a green apple. This coffee has a red apple acidity which refers to malic acid that’s in apple and rhubarb.
In others coffees you might taste citric acids (similar to limes, oranges and lemons), tartaric acids (like green grapes), or acetic acids (by itself a vinegary flavour, but in small amounts it’s more like wine).
