El Obraje Natural Gesha

The El Obraje Natural Gesha has subtle delicacy and intense white flower aroma we’ve learnt to appreciate in Geshas. Expect notes of peach, blood orange and raspberry with balanced acidity.

This month’s coffee comes from absolutely unique conditions in Nariño, Colombia. The farm, Hacienda El Obraje is located in a valley in the astonishing altitude of 2200 meters above sea level. The farmer, Pablo Guerrero first planted coffee in it’s soil in the year 2000, after trying various different crops with poor success. El Obraje’s location is challenging in terms of farming fresh goods such as apples so he decided to give coffee a go. The farm started selling commodity coffee to the local wet mill but in 2009, Pablo built a wet mill for their own use and started focusing on specialty coffee.

Being located in such a high altitude, it was not self evident that El Obraje would be suitable for coffee farming. Luckily, coffee plants thrived in the micro climate and today El Obraje produces some of the most high quality lots of the region. It’s very unusual to grow coffee at this elevation in Colombia!

Our coffee is a Gesha cultivar that Pablo originally brought from Panama in 2011. Like with all coffees at El Obraje, the maturity level of Gesha cherries is carefully monitored by Brix measurements and the level of progress between lots is recorded. After that, they make a picking game plan to pursuit efficiency of picking labor. At El Obraje, they rest all coffee cherries in the bags they were picked into for approximately 20 hours. After that, cherries going for Natural processing are float-sorted and taken to African-style beds to dry. The drying period varies depending on climate conditions. Usually, natural drying takes 30 days.