We love the story of this coffee. It all starts with relationships. El Crucero B was introduced to us through La Real Expedición Botánica (LaREB), an exclusive collective of coffee producers in Colombia. Only in existence for a short time, LaREB has received continued guidance and education on processing technologies and quality control. Ana Mustafá is the director of the collective, and her family have been coffee farmers in the region for nearly 80 years. She is the third generation and now runs the coffee farms alongside her father and cousin Claudia. For the majority of their life they sold commodity coffee to local collectives where prices are set by the FNC. There is very minimal focus on quality improvement or traceability, and a stronger reliance upon overall yield. However, about 3 years ago Ana was introduced to the specialty coffee market where quality and transparency is valued and incentivized. From this point, she began selling specialty lots through LaREB and we feel fortunate to partner with her on this new path. Experimentation and innovation now play a much bigger role at the farm and we love to see this kind of development and progress.

The El Crucero B lot comes from the Castillo variety and is grown at an elevation of around 1600 MASL. The coffee comes from two farms, La Macarena and Los Naranjos. This particular coffee is processed through a system that Ana calls layered washed. Instead of waiting to depulp the entire harvest together, the cherries are depulped and washed day over day which blends fermentation times. We believe this method has yielded an elegantly cleaner cup with plenty of dark fruit characteristics.

From a sourcing philosophy, the work of LaREB falls right in line with our goal of transparency, quality, and relationship. We are excited to see this type of work continue, and what the future holds for Ana Mustafá and her family.