La Divisa farm is located in the region of Apia, Risaralda, Colombia, at an altitude of 1780 MASL, where the coffee grows on privileged land that is vast in minerals and rich in nutrients. The region also has microclimates, that causes unexpected and drastic temperature changes, which make the coffee cherries to ripen slower allowing more sugars to form in the mucilage.
At “La Divisa” farm, the coffee is hand-picked and the process is carried out between
6 am and 12 pm to take advantage of the sunlight during the harvest period.
In order to obtain a more balanced and consistent coffee, Oscar pays better rates to
the pickers with the condition to focus exclusively on the ripe cherries that are at their
optimum level of ripeness.
During the harvest period at “La Divisa”, the picking is done every 20 days, the purpose
behind this is to let the cherries to ripen properly until they achieve its optimum level
of ripeness.
Drying Process for all of the “Natural” coffee produced at La Divisa:
The picking starts around 6 am and finishes at around 12 pm. If the day is sunny and warm,
the coffee cherries are put into water tanks for 2 to 3 hours. After this time, floaters are
removed. Once floaters have been removed, the batch is immediately put to dry on the
marquee, or on the patio.
On the other hand, when the picking finishes but the day is cold and cloudy, the batch is put
into fermentation tanks until the next day (24 hours), after this period of time the coffee is
placed onto patios or on marquees to dry. The drying takes normally between 18 to 22 days.
To finalise, when the coffee has been processed (picked, selected, fermented and dried), it is
placed inside grain pro bags in order to let it settle and to preserve its quality until the milling
process.