Marisol Ñañéz
“Why are you into coffee anyway, Marisol? I mean, it’s an honor to grow up in a family of coffee farmers, where we were involved in everything coffee from a young age. I’ve always loved coffee and at the age of ten my dad gave me a piece of land to motivate me even more. Later in 2009 I went to Bogotá to do a course on quality and also physical and sensory analysis of coffee. In 2010 I won a competition and as a prize I got the opportunity to do a Q grader certificate. Later on I completed my technical training in coffee selection to apply all this knowledge on the farm. I also ran a women’s association for five years with my own coffee products, mainly roasted coffee, and through this I gained exposure and recognition for my project management and marketing skills.
We have now ventured into growing exotic varieties such as Pink Bourbon, Bourbon Ají and other varieties, and I have also started fermentation processes. We have our own brand of coffee with which we want to continue to pioneer the coffee culture.”
COUNTRY
Colombia
REGION
Bruselas, Huila
FARM
Finca La Correa
ALTITUDE
1750 m
SIZE OF THE FARM
15 ha
COFFEE VARIETIES
Colombia, Caturra, Bourbon Rosado, Geisha, Castillo
ABOUT THE FARM
“Originally, my dad lived with my mom at my paternal grandmother’s house, but to support the family, he traveled to the department of Putumayo to work as a laborer. He was hired to work on coca cultivation. The work was good, and after a few months he told my mother to go and see him and us, we were three siblings at the time. Eight days after my mother moved with us, the government started persecuting people who were growing coca and the bombing started. My mom ran away with us and hid us from the planes that were dropping bombs, so she quickly decided to come back to Huila with us, and that’s when my dad bought a quarter of an acre from one of his brothers and started growing coffee on it. Step by step he bought small plots of land and gradually in this way he bought from five different owners about 9 hectares of land on which we have coffee and 2 hectares of nature reserve.
Since then we have been working with choice coffee, we have made a good name for ourselves with our results, we have coffee that has won awards for its quality. Thanks to the natural conditions and the quality of the soil, which is rich in nutrients, our coffee is characterized by its delicacy and balance with notes of citrus and flowers with medium acidity. Thanks to coffee, we can live in peace and have a relatively good life, even though the work on the farm is far from easy and simple.”
CO-24-000 Marisol Pink bourbon
We’ve known the Niñez family since the beginning of Chicas and each year our collaboration has grown deeper. And, like every other harvest, we bought coffee from the great Marisol. The lot is processed something between a washed and semi-washed method with extended fermentation and has repeatedly had great results. First they select the coffee and pick only the ripe cherries, then sort out the bad cherries and impurities. This is followed by fermentation in the cherries for 48 hours. The coffee is then moved into bags where it is fermented in the pulp for a further 72 hours. This is followed by drying, which takes about 24 days.
