Carlos Guamanga Pink Bourbon FW

Born in Cauca, Carlos Guamanga Villaquiran left home at 15 to search for better work opportunities. He worked on coffee farms for a short time in Palestina in Southern Huila before heading onwards. He continued traveling for several years before fate brought him back to coffee in Huila. While working as a coffee picker, he met his wife, Patricia, and began focusing on learning about high-quality coffee.

Carlos studied roasting and cupping skills at SENA (National Learning Service) and has experimented with a variety of post-harvest processing techniques. Today, Carlos and Patricia cultivate 4 coffee varieties on their 4-hectare farm with environmentally-friendly practices.

Carlos and Patricia selectively handpick ripe, red cherry and process it on their farm. They let picked cherry ferment lightly for 24 hours before pulping it. Once pulped, coffee is fermented in tanks for 36 hours before washing parchment in clean water. They lay parchment to sundry, raking it frequently to ensure even drying. It takes approximately 15 days for parchment to dry.

Pink Bourbon was previously thought to be a hybrid of Yellow and Red Bourbon varieties. The variety was first identified growing in and around Huila, Colombia. Recent research has found that Pink Bourbon is in fact not Bourbon at all. Pink Bourbon mostly likely comes from an Ethiopian landrace variety.

Pink Bourbon has a stunningly high cup potential that wows coffee professionals and consumers alike. Its impressively high cup quality makes even more sense now that we understand Pink Bourbon is not simply a hybrid of two Bourbon varieties but traces to Ethiopian landraces. Its siblings include the highly-prized Geisha, which has consistently produced incredibly high cup scores. Pink Bourbon will continue to be a highly distinguished and valued variety.

Some farmers also report that Pink Bourbon has more disease resistance than the Bourbons it grows alongside. Based on these new discoveries, this may be due to the genetic variety it has coming from Ethiopian landraces.  

The Huila region is one of the most well-known coffee growing areas of Colombia. The Department of Huila has a population of 1.125 million and is located in the southwest of the country. The capital of the department is Neiva, a city of about 380,000.  

Along with Cauca and Nariño, Huila is one the three departments where the Colombian Massif is located. A massif is a group of mountain ranges and the Colombian Massif, which is known locally as Nudo de Almaguer, provides up to 70% of safe drinking and agricultural water for the Colombian population. 

The Magdalena River, Colombia’s largest river, runs through the region, providing plenty of water for coffee farming and generating (directly and indirectly) up to 86% of Colombia's GDP. The mountain range also features the fertile volcanic soil so typical to the Andean Mountains.