This is the second time working with José Padilla and Gonzalo Hernandez at Coffea Diversa!

This coffee comes by way of José Padilla in Guatemala and his partnership with Gonzalo Hernández at the Coffea Diversa project in Costa Rica. Gonzalo himself has amassed possibly the largest private collection of botanical coffee varieties on the planet, all with full genetic traceability. After years of collecting and transporting samples from across the world, Gonzalo began a new project by seeding these rare and unique varieties and sharing them with his friends: one of those friends was José Padilla.

This particular variety comes from a wild Ethiopian Heirloom found close to the southwestern Ethiopian town of Dilla Alghe. The trees are quite tall with wide spacing between the branches and the leaves and leaf tips of the adolescent trees are reddish in colour. Interestingly, the story of the sampling of Dilla Alghe is quite similar to the story of the original Geisha sampling, except 20 years prior: when British researchers were looking for new genetic material to make coffee crops more resilient to leaf rust and disease.

The variety itself is quite diverse and has several 'lines' which are categorized by a number denomination, so even when identified as Dilla Alghe, different samples are usually quite different in cup quality.

This season we asked Gonzalo to implement special processing at both locations (Guatemala and Costa Rica) specifically with us in mind. The process is quite simple; the cherries are fermented in aerobic tanks for 24 to 48 hours or until the cherry is 'soft'. The coffee is pulped and then dried in stages to achieve an extremely stable end product.

Expect notes of black tea, peach and violet.