Colombia Jhoan Vergara Pink Borbon Filter

Tasting notes: Lemon curd, Stone fruit, Florals, Wine gums.

Coffee breakdown:
Country: Colombia
Variety: Pink bourbon
Process: Anaerobic fermentation, open air fermentation, thermal shock
Altitude: 1650 masl

Though Small Batch first encountered Jhoan close to a decade ago cupping in a SENA lab, they were reintroduced to him through long-term friends and partners the Lassos of the El Diviso farm. The Lassos and the Vergaras have shared processing knowledge, tips and tricks, and even share drying and processing infrastructure when both their farms find themselves at capacity.

Jhoan’s parents migrated from Cundinamarca to Huila in the early 90s. They came after an uncle had found success in Huila. Though Huila was a new part of the country for the family, coffee farming was not. Jhoan’s grandparents were coffee producers in the north. The family started with about 15 hectares in total, but they started with just 2 ha in coffee and grew from there to plant up to 90,000 trees, almost entirely caturra. For the first 15 years or so, the family focused on local markets and commodity coffees, as the specialty coffee industry was still very nascent. In the early 00s, Jhoan’s mother sent a coffee into the Cup of Excellence competition, and though she didn’t win, the family began to focus more on quality, and Jhoan began to learn more about coffee.

At just 15 years old, Jhoan left high school in Pitalito and began to focus on the farm and on coffee. He began to get curious about coffee, specifically where it ended up and who was buying it, and he ended up at the SENA, the Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje, or National Training Service, where many coffee producers learn agronomy, cupping, roasting, and basic brewing skills. At the SENA, Jhoan met Nestor Lasso, which would end up being a crucial friendship and partnership for the families and for Shared Source.

Coffee leaf rust, roya, struck the Vergara family farm hard in 2008, and to combat the fungus, they renovated the farm with varieties that were more rust-resistant, higher yielding, and had good cup quality, starting with tabi and continuing to plant pink bourbon, gesha, caturra chiroso, maracaturra, red bourbon, etc.

Jhoan is an accomplished cupper, and every step comes from lots of experimentation to understand the effect of the multiple steps on the end cup profile. Jhoan explains that the open air fermentation boosts the profile by intensifying the flavors, and the anaerobic fermentation produces sweet, floral and fruity notes. The thermal shock fixes the aromatic and floral compounds into the bean pores with the heat, and then seals them with the rinse in cold water, which improves cleanliness and can extend the shelf life. To those who are surprised that a cup profile like this can be achieved without a culture washed (mosto) process or without co-ferments, Jhoan says that these flavors are achieved specifically and intentionally through the combination of different fermentation environments and a long-studied understanding of the way that each variety interacts with its environment. He also notes that unlike co-fermented coffees that can often lack acidity and body and complexity throughout the coffee’s hot to cold cycle, the coffees from their farm have nice acidity, structure, body, and notes that change as the temperature changes as well.