At Ruby, we don't often have the chance to roast smaller reserve lots from producers: the main reason is that most of the coffee we buy already is that farmer's reserve coffee. Because we work with so many small producers, the lots we buy represent the highest end microlots those farmers have to offer.
Los Guacharos Reserve is a variety-specific lot. It's made up entirely of the Pink Bourbon variety, which is a natural hybrid of the heirloom Bourbon plant and the disease resistant Colombia variety. Natural hybrids are interesting trees: most coffee tree varieties are either heirloom, meaning they have had the same distinctive DNA for generations and generations and are carefully kept that way, or cultivars, which are new coffee trees intentionally cultivated from two different types of coffee tree to support specific traits. Natural hybrids come from different types of coffee trees cross-breeding without human intervention on the farm or in the wild.
The disease resistant Colombia variety is an important cultivar. The variety was developed to help combat coffee leaf rust, a very aggressive type of fungus that destroyed the leaves of coffee trees and decimated farms. When Colombia naturally cross bred with Bourbon, an heirloom tree prized for it's flavor profile, the newly hybridized variety Pink Bourbon was created. The tree supports both the disease resistance and high-yield of Colombia while showing off the unique flavor traits of the Bourbon variety.
There are only a few small plots of these trees amongst Los Guacharos, and this coffee represents a blend of these lots from three different farmers: Alirio Muñoz, Ildefonso Córdoba, and Viviana Realpe.
Newsletter: Los Guacharos Reserve Pink Bourbon
March 9, 2022