Colombia Carolina Ramirez Black Honey

Before Carolina Ramirez was a coffee producer she was a lawyer in Medellín, and before that she was an endurance runner. The pandemic brought her home to Andes, Antioquia, and once she got there she fell into specialty coffee the way she falls into anything: completely. She now designs every lot with her mother, Maria Victoria, who runs the farm with her. This Black Honey is the first experimental process Carolina has ever attempted on her own. She takes pride in it. After spending time with it, you understand why.

San Antonio sits at 1,850 meters in southwestern Antioquia, eight hectares of land Carolina and Maria Victoria inherited from her father. Half of it is coffee. The other half is a protected nature reserve, kept that way on purpose so the wind moves gently through the trees and the cherries develop slowly. They have four people working the farm with them, and a fifth, sixth, and seventh variety of coffee growing on the property if you count what's in the ground beyond this lot. The Caturra and Castillo that make up this release were hand-picked at about 95 percent ripeness, which is the level Carolina trusts to carry a long ferment.

The processing is where the patience lives. The cherries go into open stainless steel tanks intact, no depulping yet, and they sit there for 140 hours, just under six days. Twice a day, every day, Carolina and Maria Victoria pour coffee juice back over the lot and mix it through so the fermentation stays even from top to bottom. Then the cherries are depulped, and the beans are moved to open patios where they dry in the sun for up to three weeks with most of the mucilage still on them. That mucilage is the difference between this and a washed coffee. It is also the difference between a standard honey and a Black Honey: the longer drying time and the heavier mucilage load are what concentrate the sugars and make a Black Honey what it is.

What you get is a cup that drinks like dessert with an edge. Brownie batter up front, bourbon cherries through the middle, Raisinets on the finish. Syrupy body, citric and boozy acidity that keeps the sweetness from going slack. This is what happens when a producer commits to a process her farm hasn't tried before and gets it right on the first attempt.

Producer: Carolina Ramirez, San Antonio
Region: Andes, Antioquia, Colombia
Altitude: 1,850 MASL
Variety: Caturra, Castillo
Processing Method: Black Honey