Los Pinos - Colombia
Caramel | Cranberry | Chocolate
Producer: Yaqueline Hernández & Family
Region: San Agustin, Huila
Variety: Colombia, Castillo
Process: Washed
Altitude: 1700 - 1900 m.a.s.l
Los Pinos is a washed Colombian coffee, from the Huila region, is from Yacqueline Hernández's farm Los Pinos.
Bright and sweet, the multiple phases included within their washed processing gives a depth of complexity that brings the vibrancy and adds sweetness to the blend.
Cedro Alto is the collective that work to get the coffee from producers like Yaqueline Hernández to Langdon, who sourced the coffee for us:
We are not importers, traders, brokers, exporters, or "coyotes". We are a vertically integrated organization made up of many small-scale coffee farmers that could never have direct access to roasters willing to pay fair prices for their micro-lots independently. We have banded together and enlisted the help of some non-farmers to challenge the traditional supply chain, reorganizing the coffee trade in a way that encourages progress for the community and quality coffee for the world.
Our founder, Karl Wienhold, was born in the US and worked for several years as an international trade consultant in different parts of the world, helping companies do business internationally. Later, he gravitated more toward the agricultural sector in Latin America, pivoting toward rural development economics. This shift was solidified by two projects. The first, in the northern Cauca Department of Colombia in 2012, and the second, creating fruit producer associations throughout Colombia. He noticed in almost all cases a lack of vision in supply chains and diminished returns for producers due to high levels of intermediation. Working in Brazil in 2013, he first envisioned a “direct trade network” of producers connecting directly with end consumers.
Today, the collective has grown to involve approximately 75 farms producing micro-lots and 120 in the process of improving quality and contributing to Traceable Micro-Regional lots in Colombia. It currently supplies roasters in the US and Australia with their sights on other growing specialty coffee markets to be able to involve all of the producers interested in joining the Cedro Alto coffee farmers collective.
