Colombia Los Guaduales -Yury Montanchez

About the Producer

The Montanchez family’s story is one of resilience, loss, and building a future through coffee. After leaving Nariño for Putumayo in search of opportunity, Jesus and Maria first found success growing coca, but rising violence and instability pushed them to start over in San Agustin. There, they bought Guaduales in 2001 and rebuilt their lives around coffee, restoring old plots, planting varieties like Caturra, Pink Bourbon, and Castillo, and working toward a more transparent market through Monkaaba. After Jesus passed in 2021, Yury, Robert, and Mauricio chose to carry the farm forward in his name, with Robert helping bring their Pink Bourbon into Monkaaba and turning their father’s dream into recognition, stability, and a future for the family.

The Montanchez family’s story is one of resilience, loss, and building a future through coffee. After leaving Nariño for Putumayo in search of opportunity, Jesus and Maria first found success growing coca, but rising violence and instability pushed them to start over in San Agustin. There, they bought Guaduales in 2001 and rebuilt their lives around coffee, restoring old plots, planting varieties like Caturra, Pink Bourbon, and Castillo, and working toward a more transparent market through Monkaaba. After Jesus passed in 2021, Yury, Robert, and Mauricio chose to carry the farm forward in his name, with Robert helping bring their Pink Bourbon into Monkaaba and turning their father’s dream into recognition, stability, and a future for the familyWith the success and experience he achieved, Robert began pushing the rest of the family to follow suit. As most of the farm is largely planted with varieties of a lower cup potential, like Castillo, it took several tries for Yuri - who manages the Castillo - to achieve a micro lot, which she finally did at two years ago, at age 35. With the emergence of their newly planted Papayo varieties, her name is becoming more frequently seen as the inherent cup quality of this variety, paired with the families unique processing that encorporates a wet ferment in cold water has led to many roasters in Europe developing a deep appreciation for her coffee. This year’s Papayo represents her first export of this variety as a microlot to the North American market, and we’re very excited to see Yury’s hard work be recognized and for the Montanchez name to continue spreading in the specialty coffee world.

The success of this family has a lot to do with the tight and unedited feedback loop of the Monkaaba project. As mentioned, Robert and his family have been consistenly present in cupping sessions for years now, allowing for them to not only gain access and understanding of the cupping process but also to evalute and learn how they can improve. These tools are not readily available to the average smallholder, and the result has been that we have now been able to purchase the entire production from the family - including lower quality lots featured in our La Colmena blend or Guarapo EA decaf - at differentiated prices while they simultaneously gain an improved knowledge and confidence in their own work.

About the Processing

Ripe cherries are harvested every three weeks. Fermentation takes place in a wooden hopper for 12 hours before pulping. After pulping, the cherries are left to dry ferment in tiled tanks for 48 hours. They are then washed and left in water for 10 hours, before being dried for 16 to 20 days.

Price

The FOB price for this lot was $6.74. [FOB price is the total price of the coffee up to the point of departure from the country; it includes farmgate/price paid to the grower, in-country transportation, and the cost of processing and preparation for export. It does not include the price of freight to the US, US warehousing, US customs charges, or the cost of moving coffee with the US.]

During the harvest season from October through November, the New York C price for coffee was an average of $?.??; the $6.74 FOB price for this coffee includes a significant premium for the farmer above the C market price, which reflects the excellent quality of this coffee. After being imported to a warehouse in the consuming country, the United States, the coffee cost was $8.50/lb. The cost of the shipping from the warehouse to our roastery made our final green price $8.75.

Avg. C Price (at the time of harvest): $?.??

F.O.B Price: $6.74

Ex-Warehouse: $8.50

Final Green Price: $8.75

Read more about terminology, definitions and Whiptail’s Transparency mission on our website.