Jose Joaquin Bolaños appears to be a salt-of-the-earth, traditional Colombian coffee producer. But when you get to know him, it’s clear he’s not so traditional. When he replanted his farm in 2017, he didn’t go for the expected Castillo, Caturra, Pink Bourbon varieties. Instead, he decided to go against the grain and plant Geisha and Bourbon.
This coffee is a carefully grown Geisha that Jose Joaquin ferments in two stages. First, 48 hours of anaerobic fermentation in cherry, then another 48 hours of anaerobic fermentation in mucilage form. He has experimented with tons of methods and this has been his most successful with the Geisha.
He also uses double grainpro bags for his fermentation and seals them very tight. He found the bag fermentation to work better, produce better flavours, and result in a cleaner cup than fermenting in barrells.
Twenty years ago, the only place to find the Geisha variety was in a tiny subregion in western Panama. Fast forward and Geisha is grown in every coffee-producing country. Between 2010-2015, seeds of Geisha (mostly from Panama) started finding their way to nurseries worldwide and, by 2015, many had planted Geisha. I have tasted many of these Geishas from numerous different countries and my experiences have been mixed. In some cases, there is a clear Geisha profile (but with a local twist), and in other cases the coffee tastes nice and clean, with only a fraction of the qualities that have made Geisha famous.
Colombia has more small producers than any other country in the world. These small producers are often remote and have limited access to information. When word of Geisha’s high prices reached some of these producers, they naturally wanted to find seeds to plant their own. Some were able to find seeds of genuine Geishas, some found seeds of similar varieties, and some were duped and received random seeds.
Jose Joaquín Bolaños is from San Agustin in the south of the province of Huila in Colombia. He planted his Geisha trees in 2017. We started working with Jose Joaquin in 2020 and it was clear his Geisha was legit. Then in 2023, I was able to arrange a Geisha workshop by rockstar Panama producer Ratibor Hartmann. We did the workshop at Jose Joaquin’s farm and Ratibor gave Jose Joaquin tons of feedback on how to improve quality - focusing first on the plant, its nutrition and growing conditions and also on specific details of the processing. I can’t wait to see where Jose Joaquin’s coffee goes! He is so committed to getting better every year, I have no doubt he will reach amazing results.
