From the foothills of the Nevado del Huila volcano, this coffee was grown, harvested and processed by the La Victoria cooperative. The 50 members of La Victoria have been producing high quality coffee for generations, but were closed off from the rest of Colombia for decades because of guerilla presence in the region, as well as the difficulty in reaching the area on narrow, unpaved access roads. Luckily, our importer partners at Coffee Quest became acquainted a few years ago through their president, Andrés Perdomo.

In late 2016, Andrés Perdomo rang the doorbell of the Coffee Quest office in Medellin, and had in his arms a huge bag of more than 25 coffee samples. Andrés is the president and representative of the Association La Victoria in Santa Maria. He had spent 18 hours in a night-bus to meet them personally. They talked with him for a few hours until he had to catch the next night-bus back, the same night!

He explained that Santa Maria, in the foothills of the Huila volcano (Nevado del Huila) had been closed off from the rest of the country for decades because of the guerrilla in the region. There are only two narrow, unpaved access roads along dangerous precipices, so it was near impossible for the authorities to enter the area. When Coffee Quest cupped (the coffee biz term for "tasted") the samples a few days later, they were in awe: the quality was extremely high, with most of them being scored at 86+. These were farmers just doing what they’ve been doing for ages, but they could only sell their coffee to local buyers at the market price or a value well below the true value of their coffee. As such, they were never really focused on specialty. But after cupping coffees ranging from 84 to 88 points, Coffee Quest was thrilled to think about the prospects of future harvests.

Coffee Quest hit it off with this group so well, that for the 2018 harvest, they actually rented a warehouse, set up a cupping lab and hired a cupper, who cups through every-single-sample that is delivered to the buying station. Several of the youngest members of the association have done internships at the buying station, learning how to cup and grade green coffee.

So much work and tasting goes into approving each farmer's coffee to be included in this lot! Coffee Quest shared with us the steps they go through to approve each coffee for purchase: First off, they always ask that farmers first bring samples to evaluate, to ensure not only cup quality, but also that the coffees meet their strict physical requirements (proper moisture content and water activity are two examples). Upon approving the sample, they ask the farmer to bring all of the coffee down to the warehouse, whereby they then take a sample from every single sack, and evaluate it again to ensure the quality of the lot is equal to that of the sample.