Tim Wendelboe - Finca Tamana SL28 & Geisha | Colombia

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Colombia — Elias Roa & Bellanid Sanchez Finca Tamana SL28 & Geisha (Washed)

Tastes Like — 🌸 Florals • 🍓 Red Fruits • 🍋 Citrus

DETAILS

• Producer: Elias Roa & Bellanid Sanchez
• Farm: Finca Tamana
• Region: El Pital, Huila, Colombia
• Varietal: SL28 & Geisha
• Process: Washed

INTRO

A new combined lot from Finca Tamana — bringing together two of the farm's most distinctive and carefully developed cultivars, SL28 and Geisha, in a single delicate and tea-like expression. The result is a coffee of quiet elegance and refined complexity, drawing on the fruity intensity of SL28 and the floral refinement of Geisha. In the cup: flowers, red fruits, and citrus.

THE PRODUCER

Finca Tamana is a 57-hectare coffee farm in the mountains between El Pital and La Plata in Huila, managed by Elias Roa and Bellanid Sanchez. Tim Wendelboe first met Elias in 2007 and began working with him in 2012, since when the two have invested consistently in improving infrastructure, farming practices, and varietal diversity across the farm. When Elias took over in 2011, the farm was planted almost entirely with Caturra and Variedad Colombia. Over the years that followed, Tim and Elias began introducing over 30 new cultivars — including SL28, brought from Kenya, and Geisha — as part of a long-term commitment to discovering which varieties could produce exceptional cups in Huila's distinct terroir.

SL28, developed by Scott Agricultural Laboratories in Kenya in the 1930s, is celebrated for its pronounced fruity character — most famous for its blackcurrant, rhubarb, and red berry expression in East African growing conditions. Grown in Colombia at Finca Tamana, it produces a subtler but still characterful expression — winey, gently fruited, and quietly floral. Geisha, with its hallmark florality and citric brightness, provides the perfect complement — lifting the blend with delicacy and aromatic clarity.

THE PROCESS

The Washed process at Finca Tamana involves:

🍒 Hand-picking — Cherries selectively picked by trained workers under Elias's supervision, with underripe and damaged cherries removed before processing 🔧 Depulping — Cherries depulped before fermentation 🧪 Overnight dry fermentation — Beans dry-fermented overnight in tanks 💧 Washing — Thoroughly washed after fermentation to remove all mucilage 🌑 Shade-dried raised beds — Dried slowly on raised beds covered with shade nets to prolong drying and improve cup clarity

The shade-dried raised-bed drying is the defining step — by covering the beds with shade nets, Elias slows the drying process significantly, producing the clean, delicate, and well-structured cup quality that defines Finca Tamana's most refined lots.

THE CUP

A delicate, tea-like, and quietly complex blend from one of Huila's most carefully developed and long-standing farm partnerships — floral and fruited, with red berry character from the SL28, citric brightness from the Geisha, and a refined sweetness that speaks clearly of years of investment in varietal diversity and precision processing.

Flavour Notes

🌸 Florals 🍓 Red Fruits 🍋 Citrus