Jose Cuellar Pink Bourbon & Bourbon Aji

We started working with Jose in 2023 and got off to an amazing start. He was introduced to me by Ratibor Hartmann (from Panama’s Finca Hartmann, Guarumo and Mi Finquita) during a visit together to Colombia that year. Jose has tons of coffee varieties and has been experimenting with different processing methods.

Jose has been working in coffee for 25 years. He is a 4th generation coffee farmer. His farm, Finca el Paraíso, is located at 1700m in the south of Huila near the town of Pitalito. El Paraíso is 8 hectares and he has planted Geisha, Pink Bourbon, Sidra, Bourbon Ají and Bourbon Rallado. He was a traditional, commodity farmer until 2012, when he discovered the world of coffee varieties and became fascinated with it. He decided to transform his farm and started to plant different varieties and learn more on processing. It took many years for the farm to be transformed but he is now finally enjoying production from his many varieties.

Isn’t Pink Bourbon a beautiful name? It just sounds so lovely. The variety Pink Bourbon was thought to be a hybrid, but in more recent genetic tracing it was found to be an Ethiopian landrace variety. Not surprising since almost every amazing coffee variety is traced to Ethiopia! The profile of Pink Bourbon can be very exotic and in recent years, it’s become the gold standard variety in Colombia. It’s hard to find a great coffee producer who doesn’t have some Pink Bourbon planted in their farm.

Bourbon Ají is an Ethiopia Landrace variety that has found its way to the Americas and is now referred to as a bourbon - much like pink bourbon, chiroso and sidra. As to why it’s called “Ají”, some speculate that the colour of the cherries and the slight spicy flavour of the coffee fruit is why the variety is called “Aji”, which means “red chili" in spanish. The way Jose decided to process this borbon ají is what makes this coffee more special. The coffee was picked, floated and hand selected. Then it was anaerobically fermented in a cold room for a whopping 110 hours in cherry. The coffee was then de-pulped, washed and dried in raised beds.