Finca Portugal Castillo Natural

Leonel Ospina Carvajal grew up with his mother and grandparents on Finca Portugal. His wife, Yudi, also comes from a coffee producing family.

Giovanny Cuesta Ocampo has a family history of coffee growing as well, both his grandparents and maternal uncles are coffee farmers. Diana Maria, Giovanny’s wife, has some experience with coffee production since her parents were involved in coffee growing for several years.

Diana and Giovanny established a coffee nursery in 2000 with the goal of supporting themselves financially while they finished their agronomy studies. That same year, they met Leonel, who helped them with their nursery project. From then on, the group joined forces to work on various agricultural projects including growing vegetables, lulo (a local citrus often used to make a lemonade-type drink) and plantains.

In 2012, the group began planting coffee on 0.7 hectares at Finca La Victoria. By 2015, that first crop of coffee was doing so well that they decided to expand their farms and their coffee production. They began transforming their lulo and banana crops into coffee plantations. In 2018, they purchased Finca Portugal and Finca La Albania in 2021. Both farms were already planted with coffee so they continued to tend for the land and trees.

They began focusing on specialty coffee in 2017 when they started trialing different fermentation techniques to improve coffee quality. After extensive tests, they began selling their specialty coffees in 2019, to much acclaim.

In order to produce specialty coffee, the Ospina Carvajals and Cuesta Ocampos improved coffee harvesting and ensured only ripe, red cherry was harvested. They also expanded their drying infrastructure to ensure that

Ripe, red cherry is selectively handpicked and fermented in sealed cans for 36 to 48 hours. Following fermentation, cherry is dried in drying silos at 42 degrees Celsius. It takes approximately 48 to 60 hours for cherry to dry.