Farm info

Jose Ignacio Gomez’s farm is located in Vereda el Naranjal near the town of Buesaco in the Nariño department. Paraiso’s Caturra variety of coffee grows at altitudes of 1900 meters above sea level and sees an average rainfall of 1800 mm per year. Jose grew up in a coffee producing family and has developed a good palate and an eye for good coffee. He grows coffee on 6.5 hectares alongside oranges, lemons, and avocados. During the harvest, he, his family, and team of trained harvesters hand pick the ripe red cherry and process the harvest in their own micro wet mill on the farm. 

Several years ago, Jose Ignacio built a customer solar dryer made of three tiers of raised beds underneath a plastic roof. This dryer was oriented precisely on the farm to allow light to enter to dry the coffee, and for the farm’s crosswinds to pass through to control the temperature inside. Carlos Alberto, El Paraiso’s farm manager and a childhood friend of Jose’s, oversees the drying process and manages rotating the coffees as needed. 

Jose received the seeds for the Caturra coffee that he grows at El Paraiso originally from an agronomist at Cenicafé. After soil testing, they found that soil composition was very similar to that of El Obraje, which made choosing the right nutrition plan for these plants relatively easy. After just two years of this nutrition plan the trees started producing higher concentrations of high quality cherries, with 70% of cherries reaching absolute ripeness making harvest more efficient than it would otherwise be. 

Jose starts processing this coffee by fermenting the whole cherries for 15–18 hours in shaded concrete tanks. The cherries are then pulped and washed in fresh spring water before being moved to the bottom tier of El Paraiso’s shaded drying beds, where the final stage of fermentation is slowed and extended by the shade and cooler temperatures. As the coffee is dried it will be moved up the tiers until it reaches the target humidity, at which point the green coffee is ready to be transferred to the bodega storage area. Here in storage the coffee is rested prior to export for a period known as reposo, during which all of the flavors of the coffee stabilize. 

Jose is always looking to experiment and improve production, so he was eager to try planting Geisha trees on his property. Nestled among other varieties like Caturra and Java trees, the Geisha trees are part of the farm’s greater ecosystem as well as part of Jose’s ongoing trials to improve quality across the farm. This quality is not only measured by agronomic performance like yield or pest and plague resistance, but also in terms of satisfaction for the roasters that purchase coffee from El Paraiso each year.