COLOMBIA - La Armenia

The Flavour Profile

We cupped this one as soon as it landed, and honestly, it's a lovely coffee. Grown at 1,750 metres above Pitalito, the altitude slows down how the cherries ripen, and that's really where this coffee gets its depth — ripe apricot, jammy plum, rounding out into orange marmalade on the finish. It's fully washed too, which means the process gets out of the way and just lets that fruit come through clean and clear, rather than being layered with the funk you'd get from a natural process.

Medium body, gentle acidity — the kind of coffee you could happily drink all morning without it ever feeling too much.

Drinking it black? This is where it shines. The stone fruit and orange marmalade come through properly, with a soft plum sweetness lingering after each sip. We'd brew this one through a V60 or Aeropress if you really want to taste what that altitude and processing have done here.

Drinking it with milk? It softens into something closer to a fruity caramel — really lovely as a flat white, with just a hint of that orange note peeking through the creaminess.

Single origin, versatile across every brew method, and roasted to order by Nick in our roastery just outside Canterbury — so it never sits around waiting for you. Grab a kilo and save 10%, and as always, we're happy to grind it however you brew at home.

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The Little Details

This lot comes from Finca La Armenia, a small 4.5-hectare farm run by Luis Diaz and his son John, up in El Bombo village near Pitalito, in Colombia's Huila region — grown at 1,750 metres. They've got Caturra on 4 hectares and Pink Bourbon on the rest, and this particular lot is fully washed.

About the Process

Luis and John pick every cherry by hand, walking the same rows of trees again and again through the season so they only take the ripest, reddest ones — nothing rushed, nothing mechanical.

Once picked, the cherries go into water to sort them — anything underripe or damaged floats, and only the good, dense cherries move on. From there they're depulped and left to ferment, which is really where a lot of the coffee's character gets built — that fermentation is what breaks down the sticky mucilage and starts developing the sweetness and clarity you taste in the cup.

After that, the beans are properly washed clean and laid out to dry slowly in the Colombian sun, turned by hand and watched closely — too fast or too slow and you lose quality, so this part takes real patience. Growing up at 1,750m also means the cherries mature more slowly than lower-altitude coffee, which is part of why this one has such a layered, complex sweetness rather than a flat, one-note fruitiness.

Once dry, the parchment's milled off and the green beans are graded and sent off for export — eventually finding their way to Nick, who roasts it to order back at our roastery just outside Canterbury. A long way from a small farm above Pitalito to your cup, but you can taste the care in every step.