When you take a sip of coffee grown at the Los Nogales Coffee Farm, you are tasting decades of community, tradition, and innovation.
Founded in 1952 by Ricardo Hernández, Los Nogales Farm was started as a family venture to support Ricardo, his wife and eight kids. Eventually, the farm was passed on to his third son Ricaurte Hernández and his wife Suldery who took an entrepreneurial approach to coffee farming growing it to the business it is today. The farm is now headed by Ricardo's grandson, Oscar Hernández who has continued the farms continued tradition of building community rooted in producing top quality coffee with new and innovative processes.
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A big part of their innovation comes from their three pronged philosophy to their coffee each of which characterize an ethos that the company follows when growing:
Genetics: Sourcing pure varietals from origin to preserve authenticity and cup clarity.
Terroir: Enriching their soil with organics to sustain tree health and terroir expression.
Science: Using science to improve processes like recuperation, drying, and decaffeination.
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This combination has led to lots of new and innovative ways that Los Nogales Farms is producing coffee from the moment it is planted in the ground to the fermentation and processing. Los Nogales is bridging tradition and technology in everything they do.
At Los Nogales, all beans go through the process of being sorted, put through thermal fusion, depulping, cold room fermentation, time in the microbiology lab, time in the drying room, and resting in a dark room before being packaged and shipped out. This approach allows for many points of unique modification that allows the farm to bring out unique features for every batch.
From the moment a coffee cherry is picked from the tree, each coffee cherry is sorted in through an extenisve process to determine which category of processing the coffee will go through. The farm itself sorts all cherries into four distinct groups or products:
Los Nogales Grand Reserve which showcases the pinnacle of the farms coffee, only 10-15% of any batch is selected into this category. Sorted to ensure 98% ripeness of the beans, this is preserved through the farms innovative processing before being vacuum packed to preserve its freshness before being shipped out.
Los Nogales Equilibrium represents a harmony between tradition and technique. The beans in this category seek the balance between harvest and post-harvest procedures. Equilibrium beans are first pasteurized to get rid of any unwanted microorganisms that may impact the flavor before going through a fermentation lasting 3-5 days with a small quantity of their starter yeasts. This process is brings out the attributes of the soil and environment the coffee was grown in.
Los Nogales Alchemy focuses largely on post harvest processing. These are beans that might not be in the highest categories of sorting and can greatly benefit from more processing to bring out unique flavors and profiles. Here the farm may apply longer thermal fusions, extended fermentation of up to 7 days and a greater quantity of pre-fermented yeasts on top of the coffee during the fermentation to create intensely aromatic profiles.
Los Nogales Eccentric is reserved for the lots which are outside of the norm of the other categories. Here the beans might be dried with flowers, fermented with fruits or a completely different product such as their soft dried and ground cascara. Here the farm explores what is possible when convention is broken bringing out unique profiles and flavors that will be different and distinct.
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Through these four categories, Los Nogales Farms creates a wide range of products while taking a sustainable and environmentally friendly approach to coffee production. Balancing both high quality coffee while also reducing waste ensuring that no coffee cherry is put to waste.
This attention to detail and incredible quality of innovation at Los Nogales Coffee Farm has not gone unnoticed. Winning Columbia's first Cup Of Excellence Award in 2005 and this past year expanding the farm with the purchase a new farm named Niebla.
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The work for the farm since its founding has not stopped for a second and Oscar Hernández, his family and community are still working to continue the legacy of his father and grandfather, to keep the traditions of coffee growing alive and to continue to innovate new approaches to coffee production into the 21st century.