Román Nuñez Pastrana / Colombia

Román Nuñez began working with coffee at the age of twelve, helping on his parents’ farm. He left school when he was fifteen, and his parents gave him his first plot of land: a section of Finca Los Cedros planted with 100 Colombia-variety coffee trees. When he was seventeen, he acquired another plot called La Esperanza. These two plots now make up Román’s farm.

Román lives and works on the farm with his wife and son. Two additional workers are employed throughout the year, with as many as ten pickers joining them during the peak harvest season. When asked about his goals, Román gave a simple answer: to keep improving every day as a family and to continue learning.

Román’s coffee reaches us through the Colombian exporter Fairfield Trading, or FFT. Its founder, Alejandro Renjifo, established the company in 2002 after many years of working in economic analysis for the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia (FNC) and the International Coffee Organization (ICO). FFT works exclusively with washed coffees. Because Colombia’s rainy and dry seasons overlap in complex ways, the company believes it is difficult to maintain consistent quality with natural and honey processes, which require longer drying periods.

Together with the Japanese importer SYU・HA・RI, FFT organizes a competition called the Colombia Washed Coffee Festival (CWCF). Submitted lots are evaluated through blind cupping, and the highest-ranked coffees receive a premium on top of the standard purchase price. Producers whose coffees do not meet the required standard also receive feedback on quality, helping them prepare for another attempt the following year. These premiums are reinvested in infrastructure such as drying-area roofs and washing stations, creating a cycle that supports continued quality improvement. At FUGLEN, we have previously introduced coffees from several producers we met through FFT, including Carina Andrea Claros, Alexis Guarnizo, and Neider Criollo.

Huila is Colombia’s largest coffee-producing department in terms of both cultivated area and total production. Approximately 150,000 hectares are planted with coffee, accounting for around 20 percent of the country’s harvest. Tarqui is a municipality in the south-central part of Huila, situated between the Central Andes and the western bank of the Magdalena River. The town itself lies at an elevation of 796 meters and has an average temperature of 25°C. It is considerably lower and warmer than the coffee-growing areas, which are found farther up the surrounding mountain slopes.

What makes this area particularly interesting is the meeting of two different air currents: warm air rising from the Magdalena River Valley and cool, humid air descending from the Serranía de las Minas. Between them, the coffee cherries ripen slowly over an extended period. The Serranía de las Minas is a mountain massif that branches off at a right angle from the Central Andes, with its highest peaks reaching approximately 2,700 meters. It still contains areas of native montane forest and has been designated an Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) by BirdLife International.

Román’s two plots are located in Vereda Tablón de Bélgica, a rural community in the central-western part of Tarqui with an average elevation of around 1,500 meters. Within the farm, La Esperanza lies at 1,700 meters, while Los Cedros, where the processing facilities are located, sits at 1,555 meters. This creates an elevation difference of approximately 150 meters within the land Román considers a single farm. The community is also home to La Virginia, the farm of Neider Criollo, whose coffee we have worked with since 2025. A small stream called Quebrada La Chiquita runs near the farm.

La Esperanza and Los Cedros are officially registered as separate plots, but Román refers to them together as “my farm.” Combined, they cover three hectares. Colombia, Castillo, and Cenicafé 1 varieties are grown beneath shade trees including cedar, walnut, and orange. Through the cooperative’s umbrella certification, La Esperanza is covered by both FLO Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance certification.

Parts of the farm have been preserved as forest conservation areas and wildlife corridors. Recycling, waste management, the protection of existing forest, and reforestation all form part of Román’s ongoing environmental plan. The eastern edge of the Serranía de las Minas has reportedly experienced increasing forest fragmentation, which makes the preservation of areas like these especially important within the local landscape.

The lot we purchased this time consists of the Colombia variety harvested at La Esperanza.

All three varieties grown on Román’s farm were developed by Cenicafé, Colombia’s National Coffee Research Center. They share the same parentage—a cross between Caturra and the Timor Hybrid—and belong to a lineage developed for resistance to coffee leaf rust. What distinguishes them is the year in which each was introduced: Colombia in the early 1980s, Castillo in 2005, and Cenicafé 1 in 2016. Four decades of coffee breeding can be seen growing side by side in a single field.

The variety selected for this lot is Colombia, the oldest of the three. It is the same variety as the 100 trees Román received when he was fifteen. Although newer varieties tend to produce more uniform beans, producers in Tarqui continue to choose Colombia because they believe it is particularly well suited to the area in terms of both yield and cup quality.

The processing method uses water in a somewhat unusual way.

First, the freshly harvested cherries are not sorted by density in a flotation tank upon arrival. Instead, the fully ripe cherries are placed directly into plastic tanks and left for 24 hours. Fermentation takes place while the fruit remains intact. In Colombia, it is common to rest coffee cherries before pulping, generally for a period of around 12 to 24 hours.

After 24 hours, the cherries are pulped without adding water. Many producers would then ferment the coffee for a second time with the mucilage still attached, but Román does not. Instead, he uses a machine called a demucilager. In a single pass, it mechanically removes the remaining layer of mucilage and washes the coffee, requiring only a very small amount of water. All fermentation is completed inside the intact cherries, after which the coffee is thoroughly washed by machine.

Cenicafé has worked for many years to promote this type of equipment. It has been reported that the process requires less than one liter of water per kilogram of dried parchment coffee and can reduce the pollution load generated during processing by more than 90 percent. Román chose this machine for two reasons: it uses almost no water, and it reduces the amount of organic matter released into the environment through processing wastewater.

The parchment coffee is then moved to a raised, covered drying structure known as a marquesina, measuring 12 by 8 meters. When the weather permits, Román also uses an uncovered outdoor patio. Drying takes between 15 and 25 days. Once dry, the coffee is stored for an additional eight days to allow its moisture content to stabilize before shipment.