The Story
La Laguna is a collection of twelve families and their individual farms, called collectively the ‘Manantial Association’. Each family looks after their own smallholder farm, including picking, pulping and drying, before grouping together the entire harvest into the Laguna we know and love. Unlike other farms in the surrounding areas, Laguna is grown almost entirely under shade.
Farmers are also strongly encouraged to produce their own fertiliser from organic materials. The varietals are typical of Colombia as a whole, except for the very special F6 - this is created by selectively breeding the absolute best and biggest Castillo cherries at their peak of six years, for six generations.
All coffee is washed, fermented and dried by each farmer, with generally an 18-hour fermentation stage dependent on heat, and then dried for around 15-25 days. We feel very lucky to work so closely with not just an outstanding farm, but a brilliant cause, too.
Mió is a family run farm in Monte Santo de Minas, Brazil. The city has a strong Carnaval tradition that has been celebrated every year since 1930. Its main streets close and two rival groups, Braz and Belém, battle it out in parades.
Mió take enormous pride in the traceability of their coffee, and offer detailed reports to their roasters on the exact journey that the coffee has taken. This coffee uses a red honey process, whereby 70 – 80% of the mucilage stays attached to the beans, when they are then dried, and subsequently rested in silos for 30 to 60 days.
Traceability is of huge importance to Mió. Each stage of the journey, from where the cherries were harvested, which trucks moved them, how and when they were processed, is tracked using satellite imagery.
The farm spans a total of 1,589 hectares. One third of the land is used for coffee processing and milling, whilst the remaining land is equally divided between the coffee trees and the native forest reserve. This helps to preserve the natural characteristics of the area. With plenty of spring water in the estate, one of Mió’s responsibilities is not only to maintain the water flow, but also to improve water quality.
This is a dark smokey coffee that packs a punch, for those who enjoy a highly developed roast containing a flavour profile of berries & dark chocolate. Founded in 2006 with the aim of guaranteeing traceability along the supply chain, Permata Gayo manages all aspects of coffee production, improving both consistency and quality.
The Galling-Basah process is unique to Sumatra and involves three steps, depending on moisture content: ‘Gabah’, wet parchment coffee which is dried immediately and hulled; ‘Labu’, wet green beans at about 30-40% humidity; and finally ‘Assalan’, which is exported at 12-13% humidity. This process produces a deep blue or green hue to the raw coffee, creating a special cupping profile.
