Colombia - Finca El Embrujo - Natural Anaerobic

At La Palmera, Ignacio has a large nursery that’s supplying not only high quality seedlings of varieties like Geisha and Pink Bourbon, but is also growing native shade trees that will improve soil fertility and tree health. Ignacio’ is keen on experimentation and he trying high tree density for Colombia variety trees, planting them much closer to together – about 7,500 trees per hectares, compared to 2,000 trees per hectare for Geisha – and trialing 4 different Geisha varieties to see what grows the best at Finca La Palmera. Ignacio’s focus is quality, so it’s only natural that he’s steadily replacing existing Castillo with more unique and high scoring varieties.  

Igancio saves the pulp from processing his washed process coffees and applies it to coffee trees as fertilizer. His goal is to reduce chemical fertilizer use by 20-25%. One of the issues they face is generating enough organic matter to create nutrient-rich compost. While they estimate they will need about 1,500 tons of organic waste, the farm only generates about 650 tons. Ignacio is confident that as the program develops, he’ll be able to source the remaining 500 tons to create organic composts that will nourish his soil.  

The on-farm microbiology lab was originally built to test different fermentation and processing methods but Ignacio has focused it on soil application. With the lab’s research, they are inoculating compost with microorganisms that will speed up the composting process, balance carbon and nitrogen and generally increase the fertility of the compost. One ton of compost captures 5 tons of carbon emissions.  

Water from processing is used to irrigate his corn crops. The processing operation is fuelled entirely by renewable energy from solar panels. Another change Ignacio is making to ensure the highest quality and most sustainable processing is transitioning to lower water-use processing as much as possible. 

Pink Bourbon was previously thought to be a hybrid of Yellow and Red Bourbon varieties. The variety was first identified growing in and around Huila, Colombia. Recent research has found that Pink Bourbon is in fact not Bourbon at all. Pink Bourbon mostly likely comes from an Ethiopian landrace variety.

Pink Bourbon has a stunningly high cup potential that wows coffee professionals and consumers alike. Its impressively high cup quality makes even more sense now that we understand Pink Bourbon is not simply a hybrid of two Bourbon varieties but traces to Ethiopian landraces. Its siblings include the highly-prized Geisha, which has consistently produced incredibly high cup scores. Pink Bourbon will continue to be a highly distinguished and valued variety.

Some farmers also report that Pink Bourbon has more disease resistance than the Bourbons it grows alongside. Based on these new discoveries, this may be due to the genetic variety it has coming from Ethiopian landraces.