ABOUT CAFE GRANJA LA ESPERANZA
Café Granja La Esperanza (CGLE) is a family-run group of coffee farms located in Valle del Cauca, Colombia. Their farms are Cerro Azul, Las Margaritas, La Esperanza and Potosi. Their journey into high-end coffee varieties began over a decade ago when one of the founders brought back prize-winning Panamanian Geisha seeds, aiming to cultivate this esteemed variety at their Cerro Azul farm. This initiative marked the beginning of CGLE’s commitment to innovation in coffee cultivation, focusing on developing hybrids that combine exceptional flavour profiles with resilience to changing climatic conditions.
CGLE has a decorated history, both in winning coffee awards and being used successfully by competitors on the world stage since 2012.
ABOUT GEISHA NATURAL
This natural process amplifies this Geisha’s fruity notes, offering a rich and full-bodied experience with pronounced berry flavours.
This lots journey begins with hand-picked cherries, carefully selected at their peak ripeness. Each cherry is gently floated in a tank of water. This removes and less-dense beans ensuring only the best make it to the final cup. The BRIX (measurement of sugar content) of the cherries is measured before the cherries are placed in an open tank for a 72 hour aerobic fermentation, allowing complex flavours to develop.
This coffee, as with all coffees from CGLE, is dried in a controlled environment with mechanical driers. For this lot, the driers are set to 38°C for 8-12 days. This meticulous drying process locks in the flavour and aroma. The beans are then stored in a climate-controlled warehouse between 18-19°C until shipped to Zest!
ABOUT ZEST AND CGLE RELATIONSHIP
Our collaboration with CGLE has been instrumental in bringing some of the world’s most exceptional coffees to our customers. Through exclusive cupping sessions, auctions and origin trips, we’ve had the privilege to sample and select unique and rare coffees from CGLE’s diverse varietals and innovative processing methods.
Our team has walked the plantations of CGLE farms twice now (2023 and 2024), in origin sourcing trips to secure delicious coffee for the Australia specialty coffee market. CGLE is our first point of call for competition level microlots in Colombia. Our partnership has grown so far that the team at CGLE let us plant 4 trees – two in 2023 and two in 2024. We planted two Mandela varietal trees, a hybrid varietal created by CGLE. This partnership has allowed us to offer coffees that not only showcase CGLE’s dedication to quality and innovation but also provide our customers with unparalleled flavour experiences.
