Alexander Hernandez

Sweet & balanced with a clean finish. Region: Pitalito Process: Washed Varietals: Caturra Alexander Hernández Toledo farms Finca La Esmeralda near Pitalito in southern Huila, working alongside Leidy Johana Vargas. Public producer profiles place the farm at roughly nine hectares and around 1,700–1,800 MASL, with Caturra, Colombia and Gesha growing beneath cachingo, guamo and plantain shade. Their focus is on careful harvesting and disciplined post-harvest work that expresses structure, sweetness and florality without relying on overt fermentation character. Assembly sourced this Caturra lot through Cofinet, a Colombian grower-exporter whose Australian team connects roasters with producers at origin. Pitalito is one of Huila’s best-known coffee centres, close to the Colombian Massif where the Andes divide and the headwaters of major rivers, including the Magdalena, begin. Steep terrain and rapid changes in elevation create distinct microclimates from farm to farm, while cool high-altitude nights slow cherry maturation and help preserve acidity. Caturra itself is a compact natural mutation of Bourbon: its smaller trees allow denser planting and make selective picking easier, while its strong cup potential helped it spread widely through Colombia. The trade-off is susceptibility to coffee leaf rust, making shade, soil health and attentive farm management particularly important. For washed processing, ripe cherries are sorted and depulped before fermentation loosens the sticky mucilage surrounding the parchment. The coffee is then washed clean and dried carefully to a stable moisture level. Removing the fruit early tends to reveal clearer separation between sweetness, acidity and aroma than fruit-dried processing, but a good washed coffee can still carry plenty of texture and ripe-fruit character. Here, chocolate and caramel form a comforting base, lifted by orange-blossom florals and citrus brightness. The result is a balanced, clean Colombian filter coffee with enough sweetness and structure to remain expressive across different brewers. Roasted for filter by Assembly in Melbourne.