Our AMATE coffee gets all the time and loving care needed to develop its unique flavor.
Coffee cultivation with heart and mind
How do we cultivate our coffee?
All our coffee is raised by hand and in harmony with nature.
Everything starts with the prudent manual selection of the very best coffee cherries that will become seeds. We peel off the skin and the pulp and then plant each coffee seed one by one in a very special mix of river sand and topsoil. Once the seeds become small plants, we take good care of them, while they grow for 6 months in our café guardería – the coffee nursery, a specially protected area where the amount of sunlight and the humidity is controlled.
As soon as the little ones are big enough, we carry them to their predetermined spot at the hillside and plant them by hand. They grow and prosper there for 3 years until we can harvest the very first coffee cherries.
our coffee babies in the river sand
young coffee plants in our nursery
young coffee plants are carried to the hillside
How do we harvest our coffee?
We are harvesting once a year. During this time we make sure to pick only the ripe, dark red coffee cherries and we are picking them in the traditional way – by hand. To pick and select each coffee cherry by hand is one of the secrets for achieving the best coffee quality. At the same time, we make sure that our plants are not injured during the process. In order to pick the cherries in this particular way, we use a special technique that has been passed from generation to generation on our ranch.
ripe, red coffee cherries that can be picked carefully
we pick all our coffee cherries by hand
How do we process our coffee?
During the harvest, we pick the dark red coffee cherries every day at different hillsides on the ranch. Our picked coffee cherries are then processed within a few hours right on the ranch to ensure high quality.
The first process called wet process takes out the pulp of the coffee cherries and leaves us with the actual coffee beans. These are then washed and sundried for at least 48 hours. As soon as the coffee beans are dry, the second process called dry process takes place where we peel a skin, thin as parchment, from the coffee bean. After this, we do a strict selection in order to get the very best coffee beans. Now our exclusive Single Estate coffee is ready to be exported.
Part of our coffee remains with the families, who live and work with us on the ranch. In this way, they can roast their AMATE coffee over open-fire and enjoy it daily for the whole year.
coffee is washed
coffee is sun-dried
Juanita is roasting coffee over open-fire
Now you know how our coffee is carefully cultivated, harvested, and processed.
Get to know more about the higher quality and exclusivity our roasted coffee has versus industrial coffees here.