LA PALMA Y EL TUCAN [2020]

Arriving mid-November

Forward purchased 350kg of Lactic Castillo from La Palma y El Tucan's Neighbours and Crops Program

Eight (8) bags have been booked by Rosso Coffee Roasters in Calgary, Alberta

Two (2) bags have been booked by The Library Specialty Coffee in Toronto, Ontario

This lot comes from La Palma y El Tucan's (LPET) prestigious Neighbours and Crops program. What that means, is LPET hasn't actually produced this coffee and rather they're assisting in the production, teaming up and empowering Victor Hernandez, a coffee producer who lives in Cundinamarca, Colombia. LPET has created a brilliant business model focused on their community and empowering the small holder producers surrounding them in many ways.

Rather than Victor having to harvest his own coffee, or worry about buying compost, he has the team from LPET visit him weekly to ensure proper techniques are being used in terms of pruning, fertilization or harvesting. LPET actually sends their team of Elite Pickers to harvest the coffee when they believe the time is right. Then, they pay Victor for the volume of cherries harvested, at premiums above what the FNC in Colombia pays for coffee parchment. Not only is Victor seeing a premium for his coffee, but he's also having the vast majority of the work taken off of his plate, allowing him to focus on other streams of agriculture.

The coffee is then taken to LPET's state-of-the-art wet mill where it's processed with intention. Here they do an anaerobic fermentation in cherry, then depulp the coffee and ferment the parchment a secondary time in traditional Colombian tiled tanks.

This is one of the most sustainable and impressive models we've seen to date in the coffee industry.