MULADONA'S SEVENTH TALE, Colombia

Blueberry, Honeycomb, Hibiscus

Finca Tres Edgaritos sits in the hills above Timbío, a municipality in the department of Cauca in Colombia's southwest. The farm is worked by Edgar Moreno, one of a line of Cauca smallholders who have earned a name across the region for careful, deliberate coffee. Here coffee grows on small plots strung high across the slopes of the Andes.

The land carries the mark of the cordillera. Cauca's soils are volcanic and deep, rich in the minerals that feed a slow, even crop, and the elevation holds temperatures down through the season. Cold nights and warm days stretch the ripening of the cherry, and sugars and acids gather over a longer window.

This is a traditional washed coffee. Cherry is picked by hand at full ripeness, depulped, fermented and washed clean before drying slowly on the farm. Washing strips the fruit back to the seed and lets the variety and the site speak without the weight a natural would add.

The variety is Shakiso, an Ethiopian selection named for a high district of the Guji zone, where heirloom genetics still run distinct from the rest of the country. Set at 1,930 metres in Cauca and finished washed, those genetics lift the cup into a clear, aromatic register.