Ronaldo & Valentina - El Recreo

FARM: EL RECREO

LOCATION: MONIQUIRA, BOYACA, COLOMBIA

ALTITUDE: 1830 MASL

VARIETY: CASTILLO

PROCESS: WASHED

Tasting Notes: Grape Candy, Star Fruit, Molasses

Ronaldo is from Boyaca. He grew up on his family’s farm, El Recreo, but didn’t really like coffee for most of his life. Ronaldo fell ill and soon turned to coffee as a potential remedy for his symptoms. While the coffee did not alleviate his sickness, he found a new appreciation for its flavor and value. So, he made it his life goal to learn more about coffee and become a barista. Ronaldo’s drive to become a Barista led him to enroll in various barista programs and to be an intern in a Coffee Lab in the city of Medellin, but when he finished them all, he struggled to find a job, but got the word of a specialty coffee shop in Bogota that needed a barista.

Valentina is from Bogota. Her family has been working with coffee exports for more than a decade now, so from an early age she had contact with coffee farms. She had the intention of going to Germany for University, but she had to learn the language, so in the meantime, she started working in her brother’s specialty coffee shop in Bogota as a barista.

The rest is history, Ronaldo and Valentia met in this cafe and connected in more than one way, participating together in multiple barista and brewing competitions, creating their own brand of roasted coffee, and currently, working at Ronaldo's family farm: Where they came to do things differently than everyone in that region.

This coffee is the product of commitment, love, and the passion of bringing the family coffee to the next level. Ronaldo and Valentina decided to take on the farm duties of Ronaldo’s family farm, and start developing their own brand, with differentiated coffees. This estate lot was the first step towards that goal. They first had to train all the coffee pickers of the farm on how to select only the ripest of cherries. Once harvested, cherries get depulped in batches from Monday to Friday, while the cherries of each day get stored in fermenting bags for the rest of the week. This fermentation process is known as cochadas in Colombia. At the end of the week, all the cherries are taken from the fermenting bags to wash and are placed to dry in open patios for about 20 days. They are very proud of this coffee and we think it sings of grape candy and star fruit with a coating, molasses-like sweetness.