Grower: Producers from Colombia
Variety: Caturra, Castillo, and Colombia
Region: Coffee communities in Colombia
Harvest: May - September
Altitude: 1500 – 1800 masl
Soil: Volcanic loam
Process: Fully washed and mechanically dried
BACKGROUND DETAILS
It's important to note that "Natural" does not refer to how the green coffee was processed but to the "Decaffeination Process." Azahar decaffeinated the coffee using a process called Descafecol. In this solvent-based process, ethyl acetate removes caffeine from the coffee beans (a natural extract distilled from sugar cane, blackberries, beets or sometimes grapes). The coffee seeds are steamed to open the pores and then rinsed in ethyl acetate repeatedly to remove the caffeine.
It’s not often when an export partner offers a decaffeinated coffee with the same enthusiasm given to other lots. Here is one from Azahar Coffee, a sourcing company and exporter that initially began as a specialty roaster and coffee boutique in Bogotá, serving Colombia’s top-quality micro lots to a developing local consumer base. From this niche, Azahar made international connections for their farmer contacts and started exporting green coffee with individual farm traceability and ambitious price transparency. Azahar now partners with a network of Colombian growers who understand the specialty market potential and market their coffee to buyers internationally on a quality-based pricing scale. The net effect of the intervention is often significantly more money than a farm could receive without the added exposure and marketing. So taking the sum of all of these micro-lot parts to create a decaffeinated blend naturally had to be called the Rainbow Blend. While traceability to a single farm or origin is not the focus here, the Azahar way of doing business is the origin of this blend. Azahar also intentionally blended coffee from similar elevations and the same traditional washed processing from producers who use the same careful and consistent protocols for sorting cherries, de-pulping, fermenting, washing and gently drying coffee.
