Santa Maria Washing Station

The region around Santa Maria in Huila has been a stronghold for guerrillas during the 60-year conflict that ended recently, making the town virtually inaccessible for several decades. The civilian population suffered tremendously from the conflict, always being in the middle between the warring parties (guerrilla, para-military groups and the army). Only during the start of the peace negotiations around in 2012, the FARC pulled out and the town opened up for outside influence and economic development. In 2018, The Coffee Quest partnered up with Asociación La Victoria to guarantee a more stable income for the group and other farmers around Santa Maria. The chosen method was setting up a buying station in the centre of town. The station fully focused on specialty purchases in the region and functions as foothold within the local community.

Las Perlitas

Throughout the harvest, it’s quite common that small-holders produce lots that aren’t large enough to be exported on their own. However, the quality is often just as good (or better) than samples received from larger lots. As such, we decided to buy all coffees, regardless of size and create a blend based on cup score and profile. The result is Las Perlitas, a celebrated coffee of various small lots from producers in Santa Maria, whose farms range in elevation from 1,700 to 2,200 m.a.s.l. and grow Caturra, Typica, Colombia and Tabi. As the project is so near and dear to us, we decided to create a special edition, which is focused only on producers delivering to our buying station in town.

We have created two Las Perlitas lots this time: Las Perlitas Huila and Las Perlitas Santa Maria. Because we had so many great coffees in Santa Maria we had the capacity to create a separate mix here with its own profile. Las Perlitas Huila is a mix of 7 different farms in Huila and has a very different profile. In the future we will continue with this concept so look out for our other Perlitas from Antioquia, Nariño and other regions.