16 years ago, Oliver Berdugo bought a few Caturra-variety plants and transplanted them at his finca La Floresta, located in the vereda of Marticas, municipality of Acevedo, department of Huila. Soon after, while walking his cafetal, he realized there was one tree that was bigger and seemed to be more rust-resistant than the rest. He nicknamed this tree “Caturron” or “big Caturro” and the rest is history.
Oliver would eventually begin producing seedlings from his Caturron and today, at La Floresta, these trees live on, except he now knows that his Caturron is actually the Maracaturra variety. Today he has 3,000 Colombia variety trees, 2,000 Castillo and approximately 3,000 Caturron or Maracaturra trees.
La Floresta spans 2 hectares and sits 1,250 m.a.s.l. Oliver, his wife and their four children, call this finca home, where his wife also hand weaves hats, bracelets and other goods out of a special natural fiber derived from a specific type of palm tree.
Oliver has been working with specialty coffee for a relatively short amount of time but he is committed to learning and continuing to improve his post-collection processing, also known as the beneficio, here in Colombia.
Coffee cherries are picked when maturing and Brix levels are optimal. Cherries are the pulped and the beans undergo a long 40 hours fermentation submerged in water. After fermenting the beans are then spread out on raised beds for a drying time on 14 days.
The result is a stunning clean coffee with very pleasant acidity accompanying the best of colombian coffee has to offer.
