Colombia - Edwin Bohórquez [25/26]

One of the things we're most proud of in our latest release cycle is the number of returning producers we've got coming back to our offer - some we've been able to buy consistently since we started, and others when lots were made available to us. When we first featured coffee from Edwin from the 23/24 crop year, he'd been midcycle implementing massive farm renovations - leaving him with a grand total of 3 sacks of export grade coffee, which we bought the entirety of. We're stoked to hear from Herbert of LaREB (Edwin is a founding member of CDNT) that the farm is back to full health, and with it we've manage to secure another small allocation of Edwin's anoxic honey.

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Light Roaster Influence: Castillo & Variedad Colombia can be a little herbal/green bell pepper if they're underdeveloped, but there's a heap of process-lead sweetness in this lot that we don't want to tip into cacao-nib funk. We're walking a very, very tight line with this roast - threading the needle between light and lightest.

Best Rested: 3-4 weeks

Filter: 64g/L & 96°C, with rest we like to move down to 92°C

Espresso: We like this coffee more towards trad spro - 18g/42-44g/28-32s, but can also be pulled as a turbo.

We’re tasting: Aromas of dark chocolate digestive, port wine & plum jam, in the cup it's sweet milk chocolate, cherry jam & pomegranate molasses. As it cools we're getting spiced stewed apple, pomelo, and poached pear, with a syrupy body. On cold, there's the sticky sweetness of ripe figs, plum and caramel.

Traceability:

 

Country of Origin:	Colombia
Region:	Casabianca, Northern Tolima
Producer:	Edwin Bohórquez
Farm:	El Recreo
Variety:	Castillo, Variedad Colombia
Elevation:	1550 MASL
Process:	Anoxic Honey: Very ripe cherries picked, with a 24 hr in-cherry fermentation. Cherries then pulped, parchment fermented for 36 hrs in an anoxic environment (sealed tanks). Parchment sun-dried under shade as a honey over 30 days.
Import Partner:	LaReb
Harvest:	Crop 25/26, Arrived UK Late February 2026, Second time purchasing coffee from Edwin

 

The Story

LaReb (La Real Expedición Botánica) are a producer-owned export co-operative working to develop de-colonised supply chains that operate outside the typical multinational pathways of coffee. By pooling collective knowledge, financing, quality control, export and import infrastructure, LaREB members are able to define their own terms of engagement, and it's a mission that continues to resonate strongly with how we want to build our own purchasing relationships over the long term.

CDNT emerged from eight producers in northern Tolima who chose to build their own response to falling farmgate incomes and the steady youth migration away from coffee farming. Using Herbert Peñaloza's 575 farm as their base of operations, they've established a practical blueprint for producer-driven change: a shared quality lab, new cultivar trials, and an agroforestry system aimed at long term soil improvement. Processing happens independently on each farm, with members directing their own production while pooling resources and technical expertise, and it's this shared infrastructure, particularly the well calibrated central lab, that allows producers like Edwin to move confidently between traditional washed preparations and higher intervention work like the anoxic honey in this lot.

Farm renovation, whether through stumping old trees or replanting with new cultivars, is essential for long-term productivity, but it creates real risk exposure if anything goes wrong, and will always reduce yields before they recover. Edwin's three-bag harvest in 23/24 was a stark illustration of that exposure, and his return to full productivity this cycle speaks to both his own resilience and the value of the collective support structure CDNT and LaREB have built around their members. As roasters sitting at the other end of the chain, we're comfortably insulated from these pressures in a way producers simply aren't, and continuing to show up for the same farms across difficult cycles feels like one of the more meaningful things we can do with our buying.