Neighbors & crops
LEONOR RODRIGUEZ
EL RETIRO
Village: Anatoli, Cundinamarca
Altitude: 1610 M.A.S.L
Variety: Castillo
The Profile
Our dear Doña Leonor Rodriguez is 67 years old, and she has worked in coffee for the majority of her life. She became a widow 3 years ago, and since then she has been living alone on her farm, El Retiro. One of her brothers frequently visits and helps Leonor with farm maintenance.
Located at 1600 meters above sea level in the municipality of La Mesa, Doña Leonor has approximately 1,5 hectares planted with coffee – all Castillo and Colombia varieties. Luckily, Leonor has a lot of family in the region, many of which are in the coffee industry and, thanks to Leonor, they too have joined our Neighbors & Crops program.
We must note that Doña Leonor is one of the growers who best understood our project and its purpose. Immediately she understood our desire to focus on quality, and since grasping the idea she has helped in any way possible. She even helps to sort the coffee cherries with the pickers before heading to the wet mill. Leonor is truly a special person.
We are happy to hear that since joining the program Leonor has found the time and money to remodel her home. She also uses the additional income to pay off her brothers for the land, since it was inherited she has been buying pieces from them. We hope to keep building our relationship with her and hope to have other growers who bring all of their happiness to our program!
Key Facts
These facts were brought to you by 
Proccesing Methods
Lactic
This kind of fermentation is classified as ‘Anaerobic’ as oxygen has minimal interaction with the cherry. Once the cherries arrive at the mill, they are hand sorted and placed in sealed tanks. With no oxygen involved, bacteria feed on carbohydrates present in the mucilage favoring a higher concentration of Lactic Acid, creating a unique profile of the resulting cup.
Honey
The Honey Process begins with a pre-fermentation stage of 45 hours at the wet mill. From here the cherries will start the de-pulping stage, passing through three stages of quality control before removing a percentage of the skin. While the drying stage, coffee will be placed in African-style raised beds for over 15 days. Due to the levels of sugar and moisture, the first days will be crucial to avoid microbial activity prolongation. Finally parchment coffee will pass through the mechanical drying machines to end up the drying process.
Mixed
This method involves a combination of stages found in lactic and acetic processing methods. First, all hand-sorted cherries will go through a short pre-fermentation step. Similar to lactic processing, the cherries are placed in airtight fermentation tanks with limited oxygen. Once removed from the tanks, we pass them through three levels of quality control before having the skin removed by a pulper machine. From there, we leave the beans resting in the fermentation tanks to undergo an acetic fermentation, agitating them from time to time. Once the process is completed, the beans are transferred to African-style raised beds to begin the drying phase.
Our Mixed Fermentation Processing produces a very balanced cup profile with medium to heavy body.
Bio-Innovation
Through the Bioinnovation process, La Palma & El Tucán honors the main principles of organic farming. They first capture and reproduce microorganisms found in their farm’s beautiful forests, to create their own fermentation substrate. Then, they mix this substrate with perfectly ripen geisha cherries, in a clay pot for 100 hours. This combination allows them to create a sustainable closed cycle. After the fermentation, they remove the leftovers and reuse them as compost.
If you wish to request additional information about the processing of your microlot, such as fermentation time or type of drying, please let us know by filling this form.
We will get back to you soon with detailed information.
Search for another coffee producer.