COLOMBIA | EL JARAGUAL | THERMAL SHOCK PINK BOURBON

Profile: Light Filter

Notes: Pink Ting Soda, Pineapple, Passion Fruit

Region: Amalfi, Antioquia

Farm/CWS: El Jaragual

Producer: Jorge Mira

Altitude: 1500m

Variety: Pink Bourbon

This is our third release from Jorge, and it’s definitely the fruitiest one yet. Trust me, I wouldn’t be putting Ting on the label if it wasn’t perfect, but it literally tastes like Ting pink grapefruit cans. What a filter.

Jorge Mira - El Jaragual

Jorge Mira is a bit of an enigma. He’s become a big name in speciality coffee, with many of us scrambling to get our hands on releases from El Jaragual, but he’s rarely photographed or interviewed. I respect it, his coffees totally slap.

His family farm, El Jaragual, covers around 150 hectares near Amalfi in northern Antioquia, but coffee occupies only a fraction of the land. Much of the farm remains under native forest or sustainable pine plantation, reflecting Jorge's background as a forestry engineer and a broader view of what a productive agricultural landscape can be.

Coffee grows amongst plantain and native shade trees, with Jorge cultivating a mix of traditional Colombian varieties and newer selections including Pink Bourbon, Gesha, Sidra and Typica Mejorado. Alongside varietal development, he has invested heavily in processing, refining fermentation and drying protocols, pushing through experimental into straight-up mental results.

We'd hoped to visit El Jaragual during a trip to Antioquia in 2025. Unfortunately, renewed guerrilla activity in the area made travel to Amalfi unrealistic. It's not something that often appears in coffee marketing, but this part of Antioquia remains more complicated than the picturesque landscapes in the photos suggest. Coffee farms don't exist separately from the realities around them.

Processing

1. Harvesting: This is carried out ensuring a minimum of 90% ripe cherry.

2. Floating: This ensures the removal of green, overripe, and dry cherries.

3. Oxidation: This is done in food-grade plastic drums for 24 hours.

4. Pulping: The cherries are pulped dry.

5. Oxidation after pulping: For 24 hours in order to remove the mucilage. The coffee is then washed at temperatures of 45°C, creating a thermal shock.

6. Fermentation: For 36 hours at temperatures below 25°C with specific yeast.

7. Fermentation completion: After 36 hours, the coffee is washed at temperatures of 5°C to seal the fermentation.

8. Drying: After the 36 hours of fermentation, the coffee goes into drying, which is carried out for 76 hours at average temperatures of 40°C.

9. Stabilisation: This is done in grainpro-type bags.

Antioquia

Antioquia is one of Colombia's most important coffee-producing departments, though much of the international attention tends to focus on the better-known municipalities of the south. Amalfi sits further north, in a landscape of steep valleys, forested mountains and mixed agricultural production.

Coffee has been grown in Antioquia for more than a century. During Colombia's coffee boom, the region became a major driver of agricultural development, linking remote rural communities to export markets and helping shape the country's international reputation for quality coffee.

It’s a huge and diverse region, and like much of rural Colombia, its recent history is complicated. Decades of conflict involving guerrillas, traffickers, paramilitaries, and state forces have left their mark on many coffee-producing areas. While the areas surrounding Medellin have largely been opened up for tourism, parts of Antioquia remain more isolated, and armed groups continue to operate in some rural districts. More than a decade on from the Colombian peace process, security has improved dramatically, but the legacy of conflict remains part of the region's social and economic fabric.

Today, producers face a different set of challenges. Climate change, rising production costs and volatile markets are forcing farmers to rethink how coffee is grown and sold. Some have responded through scale, others through quality. Jorge's approach has been slightly different again, applying principles from forestry and agroecology to create a farm where coffee exists as part of a wider ecosystem rather than as a monoculture crop.

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