Farm info

La Dorada is a five hectare farm located 20 minutes from the township of San Luis, Belalcazar, and 50 km from the city of La Plata, Huila. The farm lies in the protected territory of Tierradentro Archeological Park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The main activity in the region is agriculture, though there are several native groups of people here still as well earning their living producing arts and crafts.

Farm owner Medardo Fiole and his wife returned to the farm and their homeland in 2014 after having been displaced due to local armed force conflict. The couple nearly lost their land entirely, and were left with essentially no crops from what they had planted previously. Two hectares of coffee trees remained, but the trees were faded and left in disrepair. Some of the land on the farm had been affected by erosion due to heavy deforestation and coca production that had taken place during the conflict.

It took a lot of work and patience to organize, resettle, and rejuvenate the coffee trees back to being healthy and productive. Medardo managed to recover a part of the natural reserve at the farm and restore the water spring that had been polluted by chemical waste from coca production. It took more than a year of effort before La Dorada was reborn. Throughout this time, Medardo had to travel to La Plata every day for factory work and during harvest time in Huila he worked picking coffee. He saved money in order to build his own processing area at La Dorada, and eventually was able to build a parabolic drying room as well.

Medardo began selling his coffee to parchment buyers in La Plata. It was there in the city that he learned about different processing techniques and qualities of coffee, and eventually he found various people offering better prices for his product. By the time the Association of Producers of San Luis was formed Medardo had already established himself as a quality producer in San Luis.

This lot of Caturra coffee was harvested by Medardo and his family in December and January. The coffee was processed as a traditional Washed coffee with additional fermentation. The cherries were fermented whole for 24 hours before being depulped, and then dry fermented for 15–18 hours. The coffee was then washed in spring water before being dried in a parabolic drying room with lots of airflow circulation. The seeds were moved constantly throughout the process to ensure even drying, and were first dried in full sun for five days before being shaded for thirteen days of slow drying.