LA FINCA BALASTRERA
Jaime Mauricio was practically born in his parents’ Finca, La Balastrera. He has known this farm since before he was able to walk, and he recalls playing hide and seek, walking around and watering the coffee plants in what he, at the time, felt was an endlessly large piece of land. Growing up, he realised that his parents’ finca was anything but endlessly large. In fact, La Balastrera is a very tiny plot of land, and the amount of coffee produced by his parents was just about enough to allow the family to get by.
Jaime Mauricio took the reins of La Balastrera in 1986, and has been an independent producer ever since. With the help of his wife and their daughter Silvia (now a licenced Q-grader who is running her own small farm!), he has kept taking care of the farm through good and bad with love and passion, as his parents and the parents of his parents did before him.
In more recent years, Jaime discovered the advantages of proposing high-grade specialty coffee to his partners. He started small, with only 2 bags, just as a trial. The result was very good, so he kept working at it, improving his skills to achieve better results every year. They say hard work pays off in the long run, and so Jaime closed the 2019/2020 season with 30 bags of specialty coffee, achieving SCA scores as high as 87.5.
It wasn’t easy at all, given the fact that due to shortness of funds he had to do most of the harvesting work himself, as well as finding ways to dry coffee in a humid region without the help of expensive solar driers just to name a few. However, as he told us, during his 30 years of growing coffee as an adult, he and his family had to face hurricanes, plagues, droughts, torrential rains and other natural calamities and, guess what, they are still here!
Not only they are still here, but they also managed to obtain a Rain Forest Alliance and Fair Trade and Organic certifications!
The washed Paraneima variety we selected is a fantastic representative of the results of Jaime’s hard work. This coffee naturally possesses clear notes of stone fruits, honey and vanilla. We decided to go for a medium-dark roast, to enrich its body and infuse it with the subtle flavors of chocolate and caramel that arise from this type of roast. Our La Balastrera can be brewed as a memorable espresso or a sweet and spicy V60 brew, but it honestly works marvels with any brew. Try it to believe it! We can promise you won’t be disappointed!
--Fabio Ungaro