Colombia Nariño Occidente - Pasto Sede *TOP LOT*

This lot hails from the southwestern department of Nariño, specifically from the municipality of Pasto, which shares its name with the departmental capital. The ingenuity and knowledge of the Pastusos — as the residents of this region are called — is brought together in harmony in this lot, along with three varieties of coffee: Castillo, Castillo and Caturra. The city of Pasto, known officially as San Juan de Pasto, used to be known as La Leona de Los Andes back in the precolonial era. "The lioness of the Andes¨ has long seen her inhabitants take advantage of the many virtues of this land, among them the rich volcanic soil, in order to cultivate crops of the highest quality.

This coffee was harvested between 1,600 and 1,800 m.a.s.l on the steep skirts of the Galeras Volcano, on green slopes that every now and then get covered in a thin blanket of volcanic ash, a phenomenon that enriches the ground with valuable minerals that foster healthy and productive coffee trees.

The smallholder producers of this blend have over time learned to grow coffee in a temperate climate with a median temperature of 13 degrees Celsius. Being that this area is very close to the equator, cultivating coffee here means longer hours of sunlight during the day and warm evenings because of the landscape’s ability to trap the heat around the coffee plantations, resulting in an incubating effect that protects the trees during the cool nighttime. Because of this, the trees here grow slower and once their cherries ripen, they carry a powerful sweetness as well as a pleasing acidity characteristic of this blend. Growing coffee at a high altitude, with long hours of warmth during the day and Andean cold during the night is a challenge that our producing partners in Pasto have proudly taken on for many generations. This coffee is a pleasure to drink and we are delighted to share it with the world.