Campo Hermoso / Santuario Project – Red Bourbon Cherry Madness

For the Cherry Madness process, cherries are selectively harvested when there sugar concentrations go beyond 24 brix's. They are then soaked in water for 4 hours before the cherries undergo their initial anaerobic fermentation for 69 hours with Mossto. (Mossto is a crushed cherry pulp, a technique similar to wine makers. Adding this gives the microbes extra sugar to process.) Afterwards, the cherries are wet milled (depulped) which leaves the coffee with 25% of mucilage, and then they go through a second anaerobic fermentation for 42 hours with Mossto added once again. Next, the coffee is sun dried on African beds for 18 days until the humidity reading is 10.5%, before being transferred to a shady position to stabilise the humidity for 5 days. Finally the coffee is stored in GrainPro bags before being milled and prepared for export.

Farm name: Finca Santuario
Farm owner: Camilo Merizalde
Region: Cauca
Farm size: 150 Ha
Altitude (masl): 1850
Soil: Volcanic
Annual rainfall: 2141 mm
Harvest period: April – May / Oct – Nov.

Finca Santuario was founded by Camilo Merizalde, who started with a clear vision and desire to create a unique farm, capable of producing the best specialty coffees in Colombia. With quality coffee as the focus, he realised that the key was to create a biodynamic and diverse environment which will benefit the coffee as well as the volcanic soil and surrounding ecosystem in the long run. This is important for the varieties at Finca Santuario because they are high quality, typically low yielding and often vulnerable in comparison with other varieties grown in Colombia. The harmonious relationship that Finca Santuario facilitates between the plants and their surrounding environment allows for the creation of some of the most spectacular coffees available from Colombia. Santuario became an international entity in 2021, expanding to Costa Rica and Brazil and later into Mexico partnering with our ECOM network.