About this Coffee
Gentle stone fruit and soft tropical florals on the nose introduce this elegantly balanced coffee from producer Juan Jimenez. In the cup, we find flavors of cherry and plum and a beautifully integrated acidity of orange peel that’s complemented by creamy milk chocolate and a round melon-like mouthfeel.
This 100% pink bourbon variety separation, from the 16 hectare farm of producer Juan Jimenez in Palestina, took fourth place in the southern region of the 2022 Copa de Oro competition in Huila, Colombia. Señor Jimenez’s meticulous commitment to producing top quality coffee is clearly evident in this sweet and complex cup.
Since 2019, Passenger’s green buying team has had the privilege of joining the judging panel at a series of Copa Suaceña competitions in southern Huila, Colombia, organized by our sourcing and import partners at Osito Coffee. Each annual edition of the “Suaza Cup” has pursued the goal of identifying and recognizing the highest quality coffees produced by the Divino Niño producer group: a community of farmers that has been one of Passenger’s Foundational Partners since 2018. As a result of COVID-related restrictions, it was sadly impossible for us to travel to Colombia in 2020 and 2021, and we continued to support the Copa Suaceña as best we could as remote participants in two decentralized editions of the competition. Given that two-year hiatus, we were especially excited to return to Colombia in December, 2022 to serve as judges at the most ambitious regional cupping event organized by our hosts to date: an expanded competition dubbed the “Copa de Oro”.
In addition to remaining open to submissions from all the familiar names we’ve come to know and love in Divino Niño, this larger competition expanded its regional scope to welcome entrants from other sub-regions of western, southern, and central Huila that are areas of particular focus for our partners at Osito. Twenty lots from each of these broad geographical regions were screened and pre-selected by Osito’s Colombia-based cupping team. The 60 lots that were entered into the competition were rigorously evaluated by an international team of judges (from Colombia, Brazil, Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, England, and the U.S.) across three days of blind cupping. At the end of competition week, the top 20 lots were cupped one final time to determine the ranking for the top 5 coffees from each of the three regions. And when all was said and done, the highest scoring coffee among these regional champions was ultimately recognized as the overall winner of the inaugural Copa de Oro.
This coffee, from producer Juan Jimenez, took fourth place in the ‘Southern’ region of the Copa de Oro. Señor Jimenez’s farm, El Porvenir, is located in the municipality of Palestina, about 2 hours drive to the southwest of Suaza, where our friends and partners of the Divino Niño producer group are located. The size of the farm is 16 hectares (nearly 40 acres), which is considerably larger in size and production capacity than many coffee farms in Colombia (2-5 hectare farms are quite common in many coffee regions). While multiple arabica varieties, including caturra and variedad Colombia, are cultivated at El Porvenir, the lot that Juan Jimenez chose to submit to the Copa de Oro was a single variety separation of pink bourbon. While it is not always the case that larger coffee farms correlate to higher quality coffee, Juan Jimenez and his wife Leidy are highly adept at managing the large team of pickers and day laborers that they rely on throughout the harvest. This fine competition lot is a fitting tribute to their meticulous approach and ongoing commitment to specialty production.