Tim Wendelboe - Finca Tamana Variedad Colombia

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

Tastes Like — 🍮 Caramel • 🍫 Chocolate • 🫐 Red Fruits

DETAILS

• Producer: Elias Roa & Bellanid Sanchez
• Farm: Finca Tamana
• Region: El Pital, Huila, Colombia
• Varietal: Variedad Colombia
• Process: Washed (Eco-Mill, 24hr Fermentation + 24hr Soak)
• Harvest: May–June 2025
• Size: 250g

INTRO

From Elias Roa and Bellanid Sanchez at Finca Tamana — a comforting and sweet washed Variedad Colombia, picked super ripe at a deep purple colour to bring out fruity characteristics over the herbal notes this cultivar can sometimes show. The result of years of meticulous picking, sorting, and processing development is a clean, smooth cup with caramel, chocolate, and red fruit sweetness.

THE PRODUCER

Finca Tamana is a 57-hectare coffee plantation in the mountains between El Pital and La Plata in Huila, acquired by Elias Roa in 2011 after a period of abandonment. When Elias and Bellanid bought the farm, most of it was planted with Caturra and Variedad Colombia — and while the Caturra has been attacked by leaf rust almost every year since, with quality and production fluctuating as a result, the Variedad Colombia has remained consistently reliable and, over the years, has consistently tasted better.

Variedad Colombia was developed by Cenicafé, the Colombian coffee research institute, in response to widespread leaf rust susceptibility in traditional Caturra, Bourbon, and Typica plantings. Released in the 1980s, it is a multiline crossing between Caturra and the Timor Hybrid — a natural cross between Robusta and Arabica — combining rust-resistant genetics with good yield potential and cup quality similar to Caturra. Today, Caturra, Variedad Colombia, and its later development Castillo are the most commonly grown cultivars across Colombia.

Many buyers approach Variedad Colombia with scepticism, as it can tend toward herbal notes in the aftertaste. Elias and Bellanid have found that picking the cherries super ripe at a purple colour pushes those herbal characteristics into the background and brings more fruity character forward — the meticulous picking and sorting protocols at Tamana are central to achieving this.

THE PROCESS

The Washed Eco-Mill process at Finca Tamana involves:

🍒 Hand-picking — Cherries selectively hand-picked super ripe at a purple colour by hired pickers under Elias's supervision, hand-sorted before processing to ensure only ripe cherries proceed together 🌙 Overnight hopper storage — Cherries stored in the open-air cherry hopper overnight before depulping the following morning 🔧 Depulping — Outer skin removed in the morning 🧪 24-hour fermentation — Parchment coffee with mucilage fermented for 24 hours in clean stainless steel tanks, stopped once the mucilage is easy to clean off and before negative fermentation flavours develop 💧 Eco-mill washing — Washed using a mechanical mucilage remover that reduces water use from 50–100 litres per kilo to just 0.5–1 litre per kilo 💧 24-hour soak — Soaked in clean water in tiled cement tanks for 24 hours, with all low-density floaters removed during washing and soaking ☀️ Parabolic drying — Dried in parabolic dryers and shade-netted drying beds for 20–30 days, raked throughout the day for even drying, until moisture content drops below 11%

Picking super ripe at purple is the defining step — by waiting for the cherries to reach this stage before harvest, Elias and Bellanid push the Variedad Colombia's typically herbal aftertaste into the background and unlock the caramel, chocolate, and red fruit sweetness that define this lot, with the precisely managed fermentation and eco-mill washing preserving the clean, smooth profile that years of refinement together have built.

Each year, every individual picking of Variedad Colombia is tasted and the best selected — typically 10 to 15 pickings blended into 2 to 3 final lots based on picking date, moisture content, quality, and cup profile, ensuring this "regular" coffee consistently performs well above what the cultivar is often given credit for.

THE CUP

A comforting, sweet, and consistently excellent washed Variedad Colombia from one of Huila's most carefully developed long-term farm partnerships — caramel and chocolate richness with subtle ripe red fruit running through a clean, smooth, characteristic cup. Years of refinement, distilled into something genuinely lovely to drink.

Flavour Notes

🍮 Caramel 🍫 Chocolate 🫐 Red Fruits