Abordage

Producer

Carmenza Monsalve & Guillermo Álvarez

Farm

Finca Primavera

Region

Caldas

Country

Colombia

Elevation

1650 masl

Carmenza Monsalve and her husband, Guillermo Álvarez, started this coffee together. Today Carmenza runs it: at Finca La Primavera in Caldas, she decides which lot goes into which barrel, when it goes into the oak and when it comes out.

Don Guillermo builds barrels. His factory in Caldas makes the oak casks used to age rum and whiskey — including for distilleries far bigger than his farm. He was raised in a family of coffee farmers and moved to the city for the cooperage; the coffee came second.

Finca La Primavera sits in the municipality of Chinchiná, in Caldas, at over 1,650 metres — the heart of Colombia's coffee axis. Steep slopes, volcanic soil and cool nights give a long, even ripening. For years the farm produced only washed coffee.

The idea came from a conversation over carajillo: could a coffee taste of rum? Green coffee behaves like a sponge. They asked his clients to send back their used casks and started testing together. Early batches were too strong, or spoiled by moisture held in the wood. Over three years they worked out how to refresh a barrel — planing back a layer, scorching the inside to strip the last of the alcohol, then re-seasoning it — and how to control water activity in the bean.

The cherries are picked and sorted by hand. Day-one cherries are depulped and ferment for 24 hours; the day-two batch is added, and twelve hours after mixing the whole lot is washed and dried in the sun for up to a week and a half. The coffee is then screened at 14+, and low-density beans, quakers and defects are removed by an electronic sorter.

Only then does it go into the rum barrels, for three months. The barrels are rolled a quarter turn every day so every bean touches the wood and takes the aroma evenly. Nothing is added: no rum goes into the cup, only the memory the oak leaves behind. Carmenza calls the timing in and out. Roasted light in Amsterdam — spice, rum, almond, brown sugar, cream and vanilla, scored 87.5.

Castillo itself is a Colombian invention: five generations of breeding at Cenicafé over 23 years, released in 2005. Short, high-yielding, rust-resistant, and made in six regional forms — known for smoothness, aroma and a citric acidity.

Variety

Castillo

Process

Washed · 3-month rum-barrel finish

Roast

Light

Tasting notes

Rum · Brown sugar · Nutmeg · Childhood nostalgia

Light, with just enough development to carry the spice. Over-roasting flattens the barrel aromatics into something generic.

SCA cup score

87.5

Omni roast — roasted to shine as filter and as espresso.

Roasted as a light Nordic-style omni roast — a profile built for filter, with a long, gentle caramelisation at a lower finishing temperature. It keeps the origin's acidity, clarity and aromatics intact, and it is dialed in for espresso just as happily.

You can also try other brewing methods — the omni roast leaves room to experiment.

Use a precise grinder and adjust to the cup. Each coffee may need a different setting.

Making coffee is an art at every stage. At the final stage, we collaborate with an artist on an original oil painting that subtly shares this coffee’s story. Its print on your bag is a small collectible; a share of every bag returns to the artist’s studio.

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