El Carmelo Reserve

Oscar Osorio Henao grew up in a coffee family in Sonsón, Antioquia, Colombia, where his family has been farming coffee for more than 50 years. Oscar took a different path for a while, when he left the farm and spent eight years working in the textile industry. Eventually he returned to agriculture with his wife during the pandemic. That brought him back to coffee, and into the world of specialty coffee. Since then, Oscar has been learning what his farm can do.

This coffee comes from his El Carmelo farm and starts with Castillo, a workhorse Colombian variety known for its productivity and resilience. What makes it special is what happens after the cherries are picked. Oscar ferments the whole coffee cherry for 120 hours, five full days before depulping it and carefully drying the coffee. That is a long fermentation time. And it is not being done to just make the coffee taste funky.

The result is remarkably clean with lively fruit notes and generous sweetness and a little chocolate at the end giving the whole thing some balance.

Oscar is still relatively new to specialty coffee. He is experimenting with fermentation, learning what works on his farm, and planting varieties like Geisha and Wush Wush for the future. The Castillo in your cup today is one result of that experimentation. We like all this.

What makes coffee special is tasting what a farmer figures out in real time and getting to be part of the journey. Some coffees are interesting because of where they come from. Others are interesting because of what the producer is doing with them. Oscar Red Honey is both.

October's Monthly Drop is Oscar Red Honey. Give it a try while we’ve got it.