Diego Vergara is a coffee farmer from Huila. He is currently in his 10th semester of a law degree. His coffees have featured on international stages and most notably this year his coffee helped Mikael Jasin place 1st in the Indonesian Barista Championships. Diego Vergara is also one year younger than me.
Quite difficult to come into work, sit down at the computer and start to see the young coming up from behind but it’s okay. He’s a world class specialty coffee farmer and law student at 26 whilst I at 27 continue to write funny texts about coffees. Moving on.
This is a coffee for the end of the summer - fresh, juicy, crisp raspberry flavours and mandarin florals line the cup, and a sweetness gained through a washed fermentation process that lasts 60 hours with intermittent quenching.
Now what’s “QUENCHING” you ask? I know that’s what you’re asking. Quenching is a process where the fermentation is interrupted by hot water at 50 degrees celsius and then cold water at 20 degrees celsius, rapidly heating up and cooling down the cherries to “fixate the compounds released during fermentation,” or so the importers tell me.
Diego’s farm Las Flores sits at 1750masl and is home to a range of exotic varieties; Caturra Chiroso, Tabi, Sidra Bourbon, Gesha, and of course Java. I’m sure that if these are the coffees he’s producing at 26, by 30 he’ll be a name in specialty roasters everywhere.