Recently I was fortunate enough to travel to Colombia as part of the Las Mingas project where we found the beautiful Frutas de Popayan.

Colombian coffee has long been a simple process whereby the buyer simply approves or rejects coffee by the container.

These containers would be mixed of a blend by a minimum of 50 anonymous farmers and no matter how good (or in some cases bad) any farmer's coffee was, they would get the same base price from the co-op and Federation that everyone else received.

Enter Virmax and Castle & Co. with Las Mingas. Started in collaboration with Geoff Watts, they created an extremely labor and process intensive program by which coffee was bought from farmers at a base price and then premiums would be awarded to the farmer based on quality. Premiums to farmers are double or triple FAIR TRADE prices and are based on Quality as opposed to being a privatized farm subsidy. Prior to traveling to Colombia, we cupped coffees from 30 different Las Mingas farmers to create our own Frutas de Popayan Colombian Blend featuring our own hand picked profile of flavors. With farms as small as 55 kilos, our lot has a floral perfume like fragrance, balanced body and acidity with flavors of citrus and cherry. In addition, our Top Three Farms have be separated as Micro Lots from Wilford Delgado, Jose Olmos and Hector Quintero, giving not only a great premium to these farmers but also accolades and personal credit for their great work. More about these great Micro Lots in the future, but join us now in celebrating our new Frutas de Popayan.