*NEW SPECIAL RELEASE JAVA* Colombia - Diofanor Ruiz

STONEFRUIT, FLORAL, SPICES, COMPLEX

Here’s something you don’t often see, the Java varietal! With a past hailing from Ethiopia and Indonesia, we’ve got a quirky and complex bean on our hands. It’s a washed example, cupping at 88, I wasn’t sure what to expect the first time I had this, it’s a very distinctive flavour profile. Rich body of syrupy stonefruit and then this hit of spice that you’d typically in a Indonesian coffee, it’s complex… and very tasty. If you’re ticking off the rare varieties, this is one for the list.

In terms of extraction and roast, it’s roasted towards medium and works well in all brew methods, if you’re pulling espresso you might find you need to shift the grind a little coarser. Enjoy, it’s a good’un. Cheers, Joel. (Also, skim through the photos, Diofanor has a quality smile! I don’t know if you can draw on a graph the relationship between a good smile and cup quality, but we could try… anyway yeah).

THE COFFEE ITSELF

This coffee was grown by Diofanor Ruiz at the farm La Divisa. This coffee was carefully hand-picked in order to select only the ripest cherries. Later, the cherries were fermented for 40 hours in an anaerobic environment. Then the cherries were pulped, gently washed, and sundried until ideal moisture content was achieved. This micro-lot is 100% Java. This variety originated in Ethiopia and is a natural mutation of Typica. The seeds were taken to Indonesia where it was named Java. In 1991, it was introduced to Costa Rica and in 2010, it made its way into Colombia.

Diofanor Ruiz was born into a traditional family of coffee farmers and was heavily involved on the farm from a young age. Don Diofanor decided to continue with coffee and became a certified coffee farmer in 2003. In 2005, Diofanor was able to buy his farm, La Divisa. La Divisa is 14 hectares in size and is located at 1950 m.a.s.l in Buenavista, Quindio. He lives at La Divisa with his wife and their young son, who currently studying agroforestry engineering.

Alongside the coffee trees, Diofanor has planted a range of other trees at La Divisa to improve soil composition, provide shade for the coffee trees and increase the farms’ resilience. He has a collection of fruits such as bananas, mandarins, guava, and oranges. Also, Diofanor has planted an array of native trees such as Guamo, Guayacanes, and Tigua to contribute with the agroforestry in his region. When talking with Diofanor, he remembers a time when no farmers would taste their own coffee. It wasn’t seen as something important to farmers because of the enormous gap in understanding.

It was in 2005 when, after tasting his coffee for the first time, Diofanor decided to move away from traditional farming methods in favour of more quality-focused practices. This decision has had a huge impact on his livelihood and now drives him in all that he does at La Divisa.